Beijing Coma [Paperback]

Ma Jian (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0701182679
• ISBN-13: 978-0701182670
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,697,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I want to read it again!, July 10, 2008

By 

K. Noe - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beijing Coma: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ma Jian's Beijing Coma was a really enlightening novel. I learned so much about China- the good and the bad. This novel exposed me for the first time to the horrifying Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre- really important events that no one bothered to teach in high school history. What you find in this book will alternatively inspire and infuriate you, and at no time will Ma Jian leave you feeling apathetic.

The writing in this novel is unique. The narration is delivered with a certain sparsity and emotionless quality, but is occasionally punctuated with incredibly poignant and striking images and revelations that take you aback and force you to pause and reflect. The novel reminds me a bit of the fiction of Sartre and Camus, but with distinguishing elements that are Ma Jian's own.

In any case, the novel is brilliant. Read it. It is an accessible opportunity to experience the richness of another culture's literature.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars China from Cultural Revolution onward, August 9, 2008

By 

mom of 2 (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beijing Coma: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ma Jian's Beijing Coma is very well written, albeit with a bit of the stilted sound you get when Chinese is translated to English. (Readers of this book might also want to read Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng, a fascinating, brutal, nonfiction work describing the author's incarceration during the Cultural Revolution. I learned a lot about the Cultural Revolution from that book.)

Beijing Coma is narrated by the character of Dai Wei, a molecular biology doctoral student in Beijing. Caught up in the pro-democracy student-led protests leading up to the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Dai Wei is shot in the head and lapses into a coma. Despite his appearance as a "vegetable," he is sentient, his sense of hearing and smell intensified greatly in compensation for his loss of sight and speech.

I was a child during the Cultural Revolution and never knew anything about it; it was amazing to me, upon reading Cheng's book mentioned above, that this could have happened in my lifetime. I was an adult during the protests in Tiananmen Square and followed the news coverage of that time. Despite this, I was astounded, in reading Beijing Coma, at descriptions of life under the Chinese government, at the bravery of the students and others who participated in the protests, and, especially, at the long-term ramifications that participation in the protests had on the students and citizens. For example, no doctor will treat or even examine Dai Wei once they learn he received his wound at Tiananmen Square. Everyone is terrified of the government.

The book alternates between Dai Wei's memories of his life before being shot and his (internal) observations of his life in the coma, where he lives at home and is cared for by his increasingly unstable and resentful mother.

In my opinion the book could have been improved by a little editing; there are long sections of Dai Wei's internal molecular damage that seemed a little excessive. But that's a minor quibble: I found the book a worthwhile read, very informative about China as it has evolved from the Cultural Revolution to a modern society, wrestling with its desire to enter the modern capitalist world and still control its citizens. It's heartbreaking.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great Insight but needs editing, November 3, 2009

By 

Michael A. Dawson "Madhatter" (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Beijing Coma: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was fascinated by the premise of 'Beijing Coma' and was eager to gain insight on the Chinese Student Movement of the late 80's. However, contrary to most reviews, I found the pace to be rather slow and the details of the story to be rather repetitive. Too much of the novel are students arguing with each other about policy and the plot suffers as a result. At 650 pages, it's not a short book and I think it would have benefited from a better editing job. Also, I found the quotes that broke up the chapters to be incredibly pretentious and unnecessary. Perhaps they worked well in the original Chinese but in English they do not. Would only recommend to those seriously interested in an evolving China.