Nanjing Requiem

A Novel

By: Ha Jin

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Paperback | 15 October 2012 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
320 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.7 x 16.1 x 2.5

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The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century- the Rape of Nanjing.

In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrin-an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women's College-decides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.

With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history.

At once epic and intimate, Nanjing Requiem is historical fiction at its most resonant.

From the Hardcover edition.

Industry Reviews

"Subtle and powerful." --The New York Times Book Review

"Crushingly beautiful, achingly sad. . . . What you most remember, once you put down the book, is not agony and hopelessness, not darkness and blood, but rather the reach of human goodness." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Remarkable. . . . Profoundly moving." --The Plain Dealer

"Wonderful. . . . [Ha Jin's] control over his characters is masterful; Japanese characters can be kindly, victims can be stridently impatient for vengeance. All are human." --Washington Independent Review of Books

"Nanjing Requiem is both plainspoken and revelatory, the saddest of Ha Jin's novels. After this past decade of armed conflict, which has put millions of civilians at risk, his reminder of the human costs of war is also, unfortunately, timely." --The Boston Globe

"An affecting, insightful portrait." --The Oregonian

"[Minnie's] humanizing voice and struggling perspective personalize the story and provide an element of reasonableness and decency amid so much savagery. . . . Harrowing." --Wall Street Journal

"[Ha Jin's] spare prose can achieve a masterful precision. . . . Demonstrate[s] how humans cope when forced together in wartime. . . . Testament to the bravery of women in the most horrifying of circumstances." --The Independent (UK)

"Exquisitely painful. . . . Creates an unforgettable impression." --St. Louis Dispatch

"Haunting. . . . He has honed a distinctively dry, laconic prose style." --Financial Times

"Should be required reading for anyone who isn't familiar with what happened at Nanjing. . . . Courageously and unflinchingly, Ha Jin has taken an important step in remembering both the victims and the heroes of that senseless slaughter." --Associated Press

"Delivers glimpses of the massacre in all its reeling madness: the young woman who is driven insane by her manifold violations; the ways violence can smite the spirit, even when the body is spared; the sight of 'shells bursting in the air like black blossoms.'" --The Washington Post

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