

A Free Life
Author: Ha Jin
Narrator: Jaeson Ma
Unabridged: 21 hr 50 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 10/30/2007
Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family Life
Author: Ha Jin
Narrator: Jaeson Ma
Unabridged: 21 hr 50 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 10/30/2007
Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family Life
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.
Jaeson Ma is the son of two immigrant parents from China. A classically trained, New York-based theater actor who has appeared on Broadway, Off Broadway, and in numerous regional theaters, he has done extensive work in voice-over, specializing in Asian accents. He has provided voices for Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese subjects for such shows as ABC News, Primetime Live, and 20/20.
Ha Jin's success in the United States has been an extraordinary rebuttal to Yeats's claim that "no man can think or write with music and vigor except in his mother tongue." An immigrant from China who survived the Cultural Revolution and almost six years in the People's Liberation Army, Jin had been......more
I had the privilege of meeting Ha Jin when he visited Kalamazoo College some years ago, when I still worked there in media relations, and so when his name came up again - this time as an author to read in a new bookclub I have joined at my new workplace - I took up his newest novel, "A Free Life," w......more
The main character, Wu Nan, mentions reading Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas in this novel about a Chinese immigrant family’s search for the “American Dream” in the late 20th century. The books are similar in that they are slow moving accounts of an outsider looking to find permanence and security......more
I've read several books by Ha Jin, and this was the first time I was conscious of reading English as a Second Language. That's not actually a complaint. The story is about a Chinese man, a poet, who brings his family to the United States to pursue the American dream. The occasionally jarring idioms......more
“Striking…Jin’s language has ripened into something extraordinary.” The Washington Post
“A leisurely, generous tale…As vast and unbounded as the brave and overwhelming new world it describes.” Boston Globe
“Ha Jin writes of sacrifice, isolation, and valor with uncommon perception…Capacious, pointillistic, empathic, and tender, Ha Jin’s tale of one immigrant family’s odyssey in America affirms humankind’s essential mission, to honor life.” Booklist (starred review)
“A Free Life offers the greatest reward to those who read with patience and in quiet contemplation, absorbing the author’s passion for language.” Bookmarks Magazine