Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... The Crazed (2002)por Ha Jin
Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. A new to me author, who's book has been sitting on my TBR way too long. But today I finally finished it. Finally not because I dislike it, but because it's taken me so long to start. Loved the book. The ramblings of professor Yang, the impact they have on the people that hear them, the actions that are a result of them... All very interesting to read. And amidst all the party and revolutionary talk (it's the time of the uprising of the students, Tiananmen) I found it surpising to learn about the growing of one individual, one person who took his truth out of his professor's words and deducted the reasons for other people's actions and made a decision. Wholeheartedly recommended! This story turned out to be really interesting although I had no idea to where it was headed even halfway through the book. It started out when a soon-to-be PhD student began caring for his professor Yang who fell ill with a stroke. The student, Jian Wan, was engaged to Professor Yang's daughter Meimei who at the time was studying in Beijing for medical school entrance exams. While caring for Professor Yang and listening to his crazy talk as a stroke victim, Jian Wan made some decisions which would turn out to alter his relationship with Meimei and ultimately have him in Beijing at the time of the student uprising in Tiananmen Square. "It's personal interests that motivate the individual and therefore generate the dynamics of history." In this story we see how Jian Wan's actions lead him to become accused of being a counterrevolutionary, although it is personal gain by others that is really the issue. The story of Jian Wan gives a lot of food for thought. I'm up for more books by this author based on the way this particular story is told. i was more than 90% of the way through this book when it started to get interesting. if not for the ending, it would have gotten even fewer stars. themes of identity in a culture that doesn't allow individualism, as well as what happens if/when someone finally starts to tell their truth. to me, there was a disconnect with the characters and the situation. i couldn't have cared less about them or what was happening and didn't understand why someone in jian's position would feel or behave the way he did. additionally, the leaps he made with mr yang's (wholly unrealistic and so unbelievable) rantings were silly to me. there were hundreds of explanations for any of the things mr yang said and was talking about; to make the connections that jian did was just *way* too much poetic license on ha jin's part. there was nothing to draw me in at all, until quite close to the end, when we finally get some motivation for some of the action. i'm glad it was there, but it was too little too late, for me. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
PremiosDistincionesListas de sobresalientes
In his luminous new novel, the author of Waiting deepens his portrait of Chinese society while exploring the perennial conflicts between convention and individualism, integrity and pragmatism, loyalty and betrayal. Professor Yang, a respected teacher of literature at a provincial university, has had a stroke, and his student Jian Wan -who is also engaged to Yang's daughter -has been assigned to care tor him. What initially seems a simple if burdensome duty becomes more problematic when the professor begins to rave: pleading with invisible tormentors, denouncing his family, his colleagues, and a system in which a scholar is 'just a piece of meat on a cutting board.'Are these just manifestations of illness, or is Yang spewing up the truth? In a China convulsed by the Tiananmen uprising, those who listen to the truth are as much at risk as those who speak it. At once nuanced and fierce, earthy and humane, The Crazed is further evidence of Ha Jin's prodigious narrative gifts. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
This is not a book with interesting characters or engaging plot. It's just one mundane event after another that serves to reveal the different ailments of PRC. The story presents a middle-age literature professor who had a stroke in the spring of 1989 and became mentally unstable. In his delirium he revisited his younger days as his country went through the Korean War, Cultural Revolution, reeducation camps, ....etc. In his delirium he also relived his recent clashes and struggles with departmental politics, how his life as an academic in China was merely that of a "clerk." The professor's prize student, after hearing his mentor's rantings, decided not to pursue a career in academia anymore. The student tried to find his way. He visited rural China and witnessed plight of the extreme poor and how this nation's political and economical hardship took a toil on its people's morality. He set off for Beijing for a change of scenery, away from the departmental politics and distress. He arrived in Beijing on the night of June 3, 1989. Everything wrong with China so far depicted in the book culminated in what happened a couple of hours after that, with what is known to western countries today as the Tiananmen massacre. The student didn't actually get into the Tiananmen Square that night. The author wrote about what he experienced on his way there, on the streets. It's so, so sad.
This is a good book, but it's not a book I would want to read again soon. It's so bleak. But I guess it's good to be sad sometimes, because it helps us remember. Something happened on June 4, 1989, and it was not right. ( )