Beijing Coma: A Novel [Hardcover]

Ma Jian (Author), Flora Drew (Translator)

Book Description

Release date: May 27, 2008

Dai Wei has been unconscious for almost a decade. A medical student and a pro-democracy protestor in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, he was struck by a soldier’s bullet and fell into a deep coma. As soon as the hospital authorities discovered that he had been an activist, his mother was forced to take him home. She allowed pharmacists access to his body and sold his urine and his left kidney to fund special treatment from Master Yao, a member of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. But during a government crackdown, the Master was arrested, and Dai Wai’s mother—who had fallen in love with him—lost her mind.

 

As the millennium draws near, a sparrow flies through the window and lands on Dai Wei’s naked chest, a sign that he must emerge from his coma. But China has also undergone a massive transformation while Dai Wei lay unconscious. As he prepares to take leave of his old metal bed, Dai Wei realizes that the rich, imaginative world afforded to him as a coma patient is a startling contrast with the death-in-life of the world outside.

 

At once a powerful allegory of a rising China, racked by contradictions, and a seminal examination of the Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing Coma is Ma Jian’s masterpiece. Spiked with dark wit, poetic beauty, and deep rage, this extraordinary novel confirms his place as one of the world’s most significant living writers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, a troubled young man slumbers away for ten years. While he slowly retraces the experiences that brought him into this dream state, the world around him morphs into a nearly unrecognizable place. The place is not a mountain fairyland in pre-Revolutionary America, but China at the turn of the twenty-first century. And, our story's hero is not a beleaguered farmer seeking solace among the mountains and rivers, but a promising graduate student named Dai Wei who was shot in the head during the pro-democracy protests in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Beijing Coma is an unexpectedly visceral and daring work of fiction by critically acclaimed author Ma Jian that explores why a promising young student would risk it all in the spring of 1989. In this ingeniously constructed novel--which sets Dai Wei's internal recollections against the contemporary changes occurring beyond him--Ma Jian reveals the profound personal consequences of that historic struggle for freedom--long after the CNN cameras stopped rolling. --Lauren Nemroff

From Publishers Weekly

The outcome of this bleak, wrenching generational saga from Ma Jian (Stick Out Your Tongue and The Noodle Maker) is known from early on: the politicization of Dai Wei, a diligent molecular biology Ph.D. student at Beijing University, ends in Tiananmen Square with a bullet striking him in the head. As the book opens, Dai Wei is just waking from a coma that has continued over 10 years following the June 4, 1989, massacre—still apparently unconscious, but actually aware of his surroundings. The narrative then alternates between Dai Wei's very conscious observations as a nonresponsive ''vegetable'' over the years of his coma, and his childhood and student life. Ma Jian evokes the horrors of an oppressive regime in minute, gruesome detail, particularly in quotidian scenes of his mother's attempts to care for Dai Wei, which eventually lead her to a member of the banned Falun Gong movement. The book's behind-the-scenes portrayal of the nascent student movement hinges on repetitious ideological bickering and sexual power plays. Lengthy expositions of Dai Wei's condition slow the book further, but Ma Jian achieves startling effects through Dai Wei's dispassionate narration, making one man's felled body a symbol of lost possibility. (June)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 592 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (May 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374110174
• ISBN-13: 978-0374110178
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #645,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

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

By K. Noe

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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

Format: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. Read more ›

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

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

By Michael A. Dawson

Format: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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But... (Read On) December 15, 2010

By Christopher Barrett TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Before hating me for giving this two stars, let me say that I am a huge fan of Ma Jian's short stories. I feel that they are expressive, to the point, and haunting.

This novel touched on the student movement of the late 80s leading up to the Tienanmen Square massacre. I have always held a fascination for the history of China and enjoy authors such as Yiyun Li, Ha Jin, and Yu Hua (among others). Though the novel does take one on a historical journey through this tumultuous time, it has some problems.

First, the novel is far too long. Ma Jian spends a lot of page on minor or unimportant characters and repetitive arguments. I understand that the student movement suffered from poor leadership and constant power struggles, but the entire middle 1/3 of the novel is an endless repetition of arguing, distributing food, arguing, smoking, fighting off power struggles, striking, arguing.

The translation was good, but filled with far too many British idioms and slang (would be like an American translation that kept saying 'hoodie' instead of sweatshirt... you get the idea? Often cigarettes were called 'fags', shoes called 'trainers', and so on). This was never an issue with Flora's translation of Ma Jian's short stories.

The beginning few chapters and last few chapters were great. The final events of the massacre were pretty graphically written... so be forewarned.

I usually get through books pretty quickly, but this took quite a bit of my patience to push through the middle section. So much that I almost stopped reading.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mind's eye view November 26, 2009

By Raymond Cooper

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This was a very strange book, but then all of Ma Jian's books, even his memoir Red Dust are out there on the edge. The premise was an interesting one- tell the story of 1989 from inside the head of one of its victims, now in a coma. I have read a lot of books on 20th century Chinese history, and even though this book was fiction, much of the picture of Tiananmen Square rang true. I found it fascinating how petty the student leaders became at times in this story. If this was in fact a somewhat accurate depiction, it adds to the real story of what happened. Ma Jian is a good storyteller, and even though this was a long book with a lot of characters and sub-plots, I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.