Free Life (Fifteenth Anniversary Edition)

A Free Life

The first winning novel of the 2022 Bucheon "Diaspora Literature Award" in South Korea
Ha Jin, winner of the US National Book Award, looks directly at America.
A realistic portrayal of the American dream and reality of an immigrant family.
Praising humanity's vital mission with poetic tenderness:
Responding to the countless fleeting noises of everyday life through serious creation.

"Freedom means nothing to you if you don't know how to use it."

While studying abroad in the 1980s, Wu Nan decided to stay in the United States due to the Tiananmen Square incident. Bringing his wife and children to live with him gave him the freedom to choose his own lifestyle, but language and financial pressures forced him to interrupt his studies. He never gave up on writing poetry, working odd jobs while continuing to write. Finally, he and his wife, Pingping, saved enough to buy a Chinese restaurant. Life seemed to be on track, but debt and hardship seemed endless.

The family in this book is forced to leave their stable and familiar surroundings and find themselves in a strange country without friends or family. They must relearn independence, struggle to make ends meet, and seek acceptance in their new country. Is freedom an illusion? Why does material reality bind life? What is the price of freedom? This is Ha Jin's first work to set aside Chinese themes and truly confront the life of an immigrant. The novel spans twelve years, and Wu Nan, an international student, becomes a chef, experiencing the most difficult and most basic struggles of immigrant life. However, his spiritual companions are Frost, Whitman, and Auden. Through the negotiation, reconciliation, and compromise between ideals and reality, Ha Jin creates a world different from everyday life, creating a free poetic work in a symbolic sense, independent of political ideology, and rebuilding his personal life.

"As an immigrant, Wu Nan is different. He has to complete the transformation that ordinary immigrants take two or three generations to complete. On a spiritual level, Wu Nan and I share similarities. We can accept loneliness and failure, and we also yearn to complete the journey that only two or three generations of immigrants can complete." - Ha Jin ■ "Free Life" 15th Anniversary Chinese Edition ■
Special features include the author's new edition preface and Yan Zeya's special article recommendation
Award Record
2022 Bucheon "Diaspora Literature Award" in Korea's first award-winning novel 2008 "Asia Weekly" annual top ten Chinese novels 2007 "New York Times" annual selection
International acclaim
"In 'Free Life,' you won't find the author playing with any fictional techniques. Sincerity and simplicity are the rarest noble qualities in contemporary fiction." --Yu Jie, author
"Only by breaking free from the shackles of group thinking can one truly live a free life." - Cao Changqing, Chinese-American critic
"Giant, empathetic, and tender, Ha Jin's account of an immigrant family's adventures in America affirms the fundamental human mission of honoring life."—Booklist

"Ha Jin's novels make readers wonder whether the everyday mundane aspects of American life are, in some ways, as strange and wild as the very act of revolution." —Publishers Weekly

"'Free Life' is a story of 'trying' and 'making mistakes.' 'Trying' provides the drama, 'making mistakes' provides the comedy, and the two overlap to create a sense of pathos." - The New York Times

"'Free Life' is one of the most powerful novels of the year, painting a portrait of an artist who is both tactile and quietly arresting." - Entertainment Weekly

2022-05-31

時報出版

624

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