哈金新书述评 :<基督教科学箴言报>年度最佳好书

作者:change?  于 2017-1-8 19:56 发表于 最热闹的华人社交网络--贝壳村

通用分类:移民生活|已有5评论

关键词:基督教





Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year 

Lilian Shang, a history professor in Maryland, knew that her father, Gary, had been the most important Chinese spy ever caught in the United States. But when she discovers his diary after the death of her parents, its pages reveal the full pain and longing that his double life entailed—and point to a hidden second family that he’d left behind in China. 
        As Lilian follows her father’s trail back into the Chinese provinces, she begins to grasp the extent of her father’s dilemma—torn between loyalty to his motherland and the love he came to feel for his adopted country. As she starts to understand that Gary, too, had been betrayed, she finds that it is up to her to prevent his tragedy from endangering yet another generation of the Shangs. A stunning portrait of a multinational family, an unflinching inquiry into the meaning of patriotism, A Map of Betrayal is a spy novel that only Ha Jin could write.



哈金常被称为康拉德式的作家,他的经历堪称传奇,他的成就可以说是不可思议。







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1 回复 change? 2017-1-8 20:03
Not your typical spy novel

This was my most recent read for my in-person book club and I have to admit that I didn't expect to like it. It wasn't anything to do with this book, it just seemed a bad time of the year for me to read a book that I thought would require a lot of brain power (you know, the end of the school year. Parents will understand that!). I was pleasantly surprised that this book read easily and that I didn't find it taxing and, ultimately, enjoyed it more than I thought it would.

There are two stories in this book--that of Lilian's father, Gary, who is a Chinese spy operating in the US in the mid-20th century, and Lilian's contemporary journey to track down her Chinese family she never knew. These two stories are expertly entwined and I can't separate them enough to say if I liked one better than the other.

Gary is a fascinating character. He definitely isn't your typical spy and he blends in well in the United States. In many ways, this book reminded me of the TV show The Americans (even though I'm only a few episodes into it), except that Gary never hates the United States. Instead, he develops a genuine affinity for the US and sees his spying as advantageous for both countries.

The contemporary plot--that involving Lilian's search for her Chinese relatives--clearly evoked China for me. However, it was not the almost lyrical China of the Empires that I'm used to. Instead it was the harsh reality of the cinder block world of Communist China. This was an adjustment for me, but I think it was a good one for me to make. What Jin presents is a reality, one that I think most Americans have yet to face.

I did find one thing frustrating when reading this. The reader knows how Gary's story is going to end, but it seems like we never get there. When we finally get to that point, it seems rushed and very little is actually said about it. I believe that if Jin had expanded on this point it would have resulted in a more well-rounded story.

While I found this to be a satisfying read, I should also put out that not everyone in my book club enjoyed this book. Some of my cohorts found it dry and dull while others were never able to connect with the main characters. I share this only to give fair warning that this is a book that will affect readers very differently. Personally, though, I found it well worth the time and effort to read.
2 回复 change? 2017-1-8 20:06
What If You Found Out Your Dad Was a Foreign Spy?

It’s difficult to believe that you are reading fiction when you read A Map of Betrayal by Ha Jin. You may also entertain the preconceived notion that you find foreign books boring or dense with historical references you will not understand. You will not need to understand Chinese history to be fascinated by this story, although you may learn some things about China.

This author has classified this story as a work of fiction but my gut keeps saying that “only the names have been changed”. There is no reason to believe that my gut is talented at perception: this willingness to “suspend my disbelief” is most likely due to the author’s skills at storytelling.
Ha Jin chooses Lilian Shang to be our narrator. She has in her possession the diaries left by her father. She already knows that her Dad, called Weimin in China but Gary Shang in the US, translator for the CIA in Washington, DC, was actually a Chinese spy. He was exposed and arrested just as he was considering retirement. Lilian has all the articles from the newspapers about his trial. She knows he was found guilty and sent to prison.

As a child Lilian did not ever see any signs that her father was a spy. Her Mom, Nellie, an American, also did not have any knowledge of her husband’s covert activities, although Gary betrays Nellie in another sense. Lilian learns, among other things, that her father has another wife in China; a wife he is never able to see. He has children he knows nothing about and grandchildren.

The story does not show us a cold-blooded spy who hated the country he was embedded in or even a man who came to betray his native China. Gary Shang is full of complex emotions about the wife he left behind. He is led to believe that she is being taken care of financially due to the risks he takes as a spy. He is led to believe that he is some kind of national hero, although his work is known only to those in power. When Lilian goes to China to find her father’s other family, her relatives, and to teach at a university in Beijing, she learns how China really treated her Dad’s first wife and her Dad, who betrayed his adopted country, America, but never the country of his birth.

I have always been “gobsmacked” by Mao and his Cultural Revolution. He just tipped China like a chessboard and tossed all of the pieces around. Except that China is a giant chessboard with millions of people. Mao took scholars and made them work the farms and he put the farmers in charge of local governments. Talk about redistribution! As you can imagine, if you don’t already know, havoc and misery ensued. This Cultural Revolution may not have hit Gary Shang, he only read about it in the press, but it certainly affected his family.

If you think Gary Shang had the best of both worlds until he was arrested you would be wrong. His diaries reveal his loneliness and his guilt. Ha Jin has given us a new take on a spy story and still in the back of my mind I feel that this could easily be a true story masquerading as fiction. The author gets to make that call, however, and if there had been a real spy in America like Gary Shang he would be known to all of us, although by another name.

Once again this is nothing like the Bourne books or 007 or stories full of action and modern spycraft. The way Gary Shang was a spy required a loyalty and a quiet dedication that is difficult to see as heroic under the circumstances, but that surely was of great value to his beloved China. It was a life that involved periods of great internal struggle for Gary Shang and one that might prove impossible for today’s citizens who are addicted to instant gratification and acknowledgment. Trudging silently along, with only the occasional desire to revolt against the machine, is hardly our style. This is a book of subtle understandings. Ha Jin is an author who is always on my wish list.
1 回复 change? 2017-1-8 20:10
The many dimensions of betrayal
By Mal Warwick

This review is from: A Map of Betrayal: A Novel (Vintage International) (Kindle Edition)
Who is the betrayed, and who the betrayer? It’s clear from the outset that there’s plenty of blame to spread around in this deeply engaging novel about a Chinese mole in the CIA.

Gary (nee Weimin) Shang is a young secret agent for Mao Tse-Tung’s Communists in the culminating days of the Revolution. A graduate of prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing, sometimes referred to as China’s Harvard, he is singled out by his handlers to infiltrate an American intelligence unit in Shanghai which later moves to Okinawa, then to suburban Washington, DC, and is finally absorbed into the CIA itself. Despite begging his handlers at every turn to permit him to return to his wife and children in rural China, Shang is progressively more and more generously rewarded as he rises through the ranks through three decades. He marries an American woman and fathers a daughter, the principal narrator of the novel. The tale is told decades following Shang’s unmasking and conviction of espionage, in first-person chapters narrated by his Chinese-American daughter alternating with third-person accounts of Shang’s life through the decades.

The author, Ha Jin, experienced first-hand the tumultuous events portrayed in A Map of Betrayal, having lived his first three decades in China. His depiction of the Great Leap Forward and the tragic famine that followed, the Cultural Revolution, and the internecine warfare within the Chinese Communist Party during and after Mao’s final years is the stuff history is made of. By placing his protagonist at the center of US-China relations during the 1960s and 70s, Jin tells the little-known story of the touch-and-go relationship of the two aggressive world powers with a knowing touch, showing an understanding of the complex dynamics at work on both sides.

A Map of Betrayal is not a cookie-cutter spy novel. The suspense (not knowing) is subtle, and the action moves forward at a deliberative pace. In the end, the book is fully satisfying for its insight into the complex human dynamics at play in any difficult relationship — and what relationship isn’t?

Jin Xuefei, who writes under the pen name Ha Jin, joined the People’s Liberation Army during the Cultural Revolution, leaving at age nineteen for university studies. A decade later, he was on a scholarship at Brandeis University when the Chinese government violently suppressed the student protests at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The incident moved him to emigrate and to write in English “to preserve the integrity of his work.” The author of numerous novels and volumes of poetry and short stories, he has won a passel of literary awards, including the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He currently teaches at Boston University.
0 回复 vibes 2017-1-10 01:27
This is not a new. It's published for a while. Ha Jin's won respect for telling westerners about ordinary people's live in China with their language, his novels, except In the Pond, wear readers down, though.
3 回复 change? 2017-1-11 02:14
vibes: This is not a new. It's published for a while. Ha Jin's won respect for telling westerners about ordinary people's live in China with their language,
Well, thanks for commenting. New is always relative. His novels have won several top US literary awards in addition to In the Pond for more than telling westerners about ordinary Chinese lives-- what makes him remarkable is the power of his language and esp. his insightful perception into the extraordinary aspect of humanity in challenging and transformative contexts that may wear many weaklings down but uplifts those who aspire to living with  greater freedom and dignity.

facelist doodle 涂鸦板

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