Publisher Description
From the award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: an urgent, timely novel that follows an aspiring author, an outrageous book idea, and a lone journalist’s dogged quest for truth in the Internet age. New York, 2005. Chinese expatriate Feng Danlin is a fiercely principled reporter at a small news agency that produces a website read by the Chinese diaspora around the world. Danlin’s explosive exposés have made him legendary among readers—and feared by Communist officials. But his newest assignment may be his undoing: investigating his ex-wife, Yan Haili, an unscrupulous novelist who has willingly become a pawn of the Chinese government in order to realize her dreams of literary stardom. Haili’s scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personally—he will do whatever it takes to expose her as a fraud. But in outing Haili, he is also provoking her powerful political allies, and he will need to draw on all of his journalistic cunning to emerge from this investigation with his career—and his life—still intact. A brilliant, darkly funny story of corruption, integrity, and the power of the pen, The Boat Rocker is a tour de force of modern fiction.
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“Narrator Edoardo Ballerini colors his performance with a well-crafted balance of earnestness, indignation, and naïveté, highlighting Danlin’s emotional state as he investigates the intersection of art and politics and contends with his unresolved feelings for Haili…Ballerini’s delivery takes on an appropriate hint of bitterness as Danlin begins to realize that not even his new U.S. citizenship can protect him from China’s manipulative power.”
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AudioFile
About Ha Jin
Ha Jin left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of eight novels, four story collections, a book of essays, and six books of poetry. He received the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Flannery O’Connor Award, among others. His novel War Trash was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2014 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is director of the creative writing program at Boston University.
About Edoardo Ballerini
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.