In the Pond ***SINGED IN ENGLISH & CHINESE***

Ha Jin

ISBN 10: 0944072925 / ISBN 13: 9780944072929

Published by Zoland Books, MA, 1998

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing with full number line. Signed in English and Chinese, without inscription, by the author on the FULL title page. Unread Fine book in Fine dust jacket. Authors first novel. NO remainder mark, NO previous owner markings or inscriptions, NOT price clipped, NOT a Book Club Edition. Dust jacket covered in Mylar wrapper. Books bubble wrapped and shipped in a sturdy box with Delivery Confirmation. Seller Inventory # 000683

Bibliographic Details

Title: In the Pond ***SINGED IN ENGLISH & CHINESE***

Publisher: Zoland Books, MA

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed

Edition: First Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Details life in the small factory town of Dismount Fort in northern China through the eyes of Shao Bin, a worker at the Harvest Fertilizer plant

Review:

In the Pond is a slim little book about some very big issues: power, vanity, art, injustice, and politics. Where Tom Wolfe would find the makings for a doorstop, however, debut novelist Ha Jin has created a rough-cut comic gem. Set in Communist China, the book takes as its hero a small, unprepossessing man named Shao Bin, a maintenance employee at the Harvest Fertilizer Plant and also a self-taught artist. Together with his wife and 2-year-old daughter, Bin inhabits a tiny 12-by-20-foot room. Bin is desperate to move into the newly built workers' compound, and he places his name on the waiting list with high hopes. But when the plant managers pass him over, despite the fact that he's been working there for years, Bin finally cracks. "In brief, the true scholar's brush must encourage good and warn against evil," he reads in The Essence of Ancient Chinese Thought, and inspired, he publishes a satirical cartoon protesting official corruption. The consequences of this simple act snowball, and in self-defense, Bin finds himself aiming his attacks ever higher up the bureaucratic ladder. This is a book that works on multiple levels: as character study, as political allegory, as sly bureaucratic satire, even, at times, as the broadest kind of slapstick. (One memorable scene involves Bin biting his superior on the butt.) Bin himself is half persecuted artist, half self-righteous boor; readers both sympathize with him and wonder along with one of his coworkers, "Why do you enjoy fighting so much?" Even his putative victory is left in doubt. As the book ends, Shao Bin has become perhaps a bigger fish, but there's no doubt about it; he's in the very same small pond where he started. --Mary Park