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Search - List of Books by Ma Jian

Ma Jian (, born August 18, 1953) is a Chinese writer.

Ma was born in Qingdao on August 18, 1953. In 1986, he moved to Hong Kong after a clampdown in which some of his works were banned. In 1997 he left for Germany, followed by a move to England in 1999. He now lives in London with his partner and translator, Flora Drew.

Ma came to the attention of the English-speaking world with his story collection Stick Out Your Tongue, translated into English in 2006. The stories are set in Tibet. Their most remarked-upon feature is that traditional Tibetan culture is not idealised, but rather depicted as harsh and often inhuman; one reviewer noted that the "stories sketch multi-generational incest, routine sexual abuse and ritual rape". The book was banned in China as a "vulgar and obscene book that defames the image of our Tibetan compatriots."

His novel Beijing Coma (2008) tells the story of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 from the point of view of the fictional Dai Wei, a participant in the events left in a coma by the violent end of the protests. The comatose narrator functions as a metaphor for the ability to remember and the inability to act. It has received critical acclaim, with Tom Deveson of The Times describing it as "epic in scope but intimate in feeling magnificent" and the Financial Times calling it “an epic yet intimate work that deserves to be recognised and to endure as the great Tienanmen novel.”

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This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ma Jian", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 32
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