From the remarkable Ha Jin, winner of the National Book Award for his celebrated novel Waiting, comes this collection of comical and deeply moving tales of contemporary China that are as warm and human as they are surprising, disturbing, and delightful.
In the title story, the head of security at a factory is shocked, first when the handsomest worker on the floor proposes marriage to his homely adopted daughter and again when his new son-in-law is arrested for the “crime” of homosexuality.
In “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town,” the workers at an American-style fast-food franchise receive a hilarious crash course in marketing, deep frying, and that frustrating capitalist dictum, “the customer is always right.”
Ha Jin has triumphed again with his unforgettable storytelling in The Bridegroom.
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“It’s difficult to think of another writer who has captured the conflicting attitudes and desires, and the still-changing conditions of daily life, of post–Cultural Revolution China as well as Ha Jin does in his second collection, which follows his NBA-winning novel, Waiting. These twelve stories attain their significant cumulative effect through spare prose penetrated by wit, insight and a fine sense of irony…Ha Jin has a rare empathy for people striving to balance the past and the future while caught on the cusp of change.”
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Publishers Weekly