Ha Jin summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Ha Jin.

Ha Jin, pseudonym of Xuefei Jin, (born Feb. 21, 1956, Jinzhou, China), Chinese-U.S. writer. He joined the army at age 14. He received a doctorate at Brandeis University in the U.S., where he remained. His book of stories Under the Red Flag (1997) concerns the Cultural Revolution. His novel Waiting (1999), about Chinese society, won the National Book Award, as well as the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. He also won the latter award for War Trash (2004).

essay Summary

Essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view. Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

short story Summary

Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters. The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise

biography Summary

Biography, form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual. One of the oldest forms of literary expression, it seeks to re-create in words the life of a human being—as understood from the historical or personal perspective of the author—by