In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

Ha Jin Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Ha Jin

Ha Jin

Ha Jin Biography

Xuefei Jin, who writes under the pseudonym Ha Jin, was born in 1956 in Liaoning Province in northern China. His father was a military officer. In 1969, at only 14 years of age, Ha Jin joined the People's Liberation Army based at the northeastern border between China and the former Soviet Union. While in the army he began teaching himself middle and high-school courses. After his military service ended, he taught himself English while working the night shift as a railroad telegrapher in Jiamusi, a remote frontier city in the Northeast. During this time he followed the English learner's program, hoping "someday to read Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 in the English original."

In 1977, when colleges reopened after the Cultural Revolution, he passed the entrance exams and was assigned to study English. Although this was his last choice for a major, Ha Jin received a B.A. from Heilongjiang University and a Masters in Anglo-American literature at Shandong University. He came to the United States in 1985 to do graduate work at Brandeis University, supporting himself as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant and as a night watchman in a factory.

In 1993 he earned a Ph.D. in English from Brandeis. He intended to return to China after completing his dissertation, but after watching televised coverage of the Tiananmen Square massacre, he and his wife decided to make a life with their son in the United States, and when Jin couldn't find teaching work, he turned to writing instead, eventually finding employment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

He has published two collections of poetry, Between Silences (1990) and Facing Shadows (1996), and two collections of short fiction, Ocean of Words (1996), which received the PEN/Hemingway award, and Under the Red Flag (1997), which won the Flannery O'Connor Award. In the Pond was published in 1998. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for fiction in 1999, as well as the PEN/Faulkner award. He has also written the story collection, The Bridegroom, which won the Asian American Literary Award, and the novels The Crazed and In the Pond. In 2004 he published War Trash; A Free Life followed in 2007. He lives in the Boston area and is a professor of English at Boston University.



Bibliography

Novels:
In the Pond (1998)
Waiting (1999)
The Crazed (2002)
War Trash (2004)
A Free Life (2007)
Nanjing Requiem (2011)
A Map of Betrayal (2014)
The Boat Rocker (2016)

Collections:
Between Silences: A Voice from China (poems, 1990)
Facing Shadows (poems, 1996)
Ocean of Words: Army Stories (1996)
Under the Red Flag (stories, 1997)
The Bridegroom (stories, 2000)
Wreckage (poems, 2001)
The Writer as Migrant (essays, 2008)

A Good Fall (2009)



This bio was last updated on 07/03/2016. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Books by this Author

Books by Ha Jin at BookBrowse
The Banished Immortal jacket The Boat Rocker jacket A Map of Betrayal jacket Nanjing Requiem jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Ha Jin but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Bisi Adjapon

    Bisi Adjapon

    Bisi Adjapon is the author of The Teller of Secrets (first published as Of Women and Frogs), A Washington Post, Essence, ALA, Boston Globe, Ms Magazine's top 20 novel in November 2021. Her second novel, Daughter in Exile, was... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    A Free Life

    Try:
    Daughter in Exile
    by Bisi Adjapon

  • Martin Amis

    Martin Amis

    Martin Amis is the son of another famous British novelist, Kingsley Amis, and although he credits his initial welcome into the publishing world to his father's influence, much has been written about this father and son ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    War Trash

    Try:
    House of Meetings
    by Martin Amis

We recommend 46 similar authors


Non-members can see 2 results. Become a member
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket
    Something, Not Nothing
    by Sarah Leavitt
    In 2020, after a lifetime of struggling with increasingly ill health, Sarah Leavitt's partner, ...
  • Book Jacket
    A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens
    by Raul Palma
    Raul Palma's debut novel A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens introduces Hugo Contreras, who came to the ...
  • Book Jacket
    The MANIAC
    by Benjamin Labatut
    The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut is an ambitious work that falls squarely into the category of fiction...
  • Book Jacket: Blood Test
    Blood Test
    by Charles Baxter
    Brock Hobson is a loving single father, a Sunday School teacher, and an upstanding and honest ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Libby Lost and Found
    by Stephanie Booth

    Libby Lost and Found is a book for people who don't know who they are without the books they love.

Who Said...

The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

H I O the G

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.