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Also by Ma Jian:

The Dark Road, April 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
Beijing Coma: A Novel, May 2008
Hardcover
Stick Out Your Tongue, May 2006
Trade Size (reprint)

BEIJING COMA: A NOVEL
By: Ma Jian

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2008
On Sale: May 27, 2008
592 pages
ISBN: 0374110174
EAN: 9780374110178
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction

Dai Wei has been unconscious for almost a decade. A medical student and a pro-democracy protestor in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, he was struck by a soldier’s bullet and fell into a deep coma. As soon as the hospital authorities discovered that he had been an activist, his mother was forced to take him home. She allowed pharmacists access to his body and sold his urine and his left kidney to fund special treatment from Master Yao, a member of the outlawed Falun Gong sect. But during a government crackdown, the Master was arrested, and Dai Wai’s mother—who had fallen in love with him—lost her mind.

As the millennium draws near, a sparrow flies through the window and lands on Dai Wei’s naked chest, a sign that he must emerge from his coma. But China has also undergone a massive transformation while Dai Wei lay unconscious. As he prepares to take leave of his old metal bed, Dai Wei realizes that the rich, imaginative world afforded to him as a coma patient is a startling contrast with the death-in- life of the world outside.

At once a powerful allegory of a rising China, racked by contradictions, and a seminal examination of the Tiananmen Square protests, Beijing Coma is Ma Jian’s masterpiece. Spiked with dark wit, poetic beauty, and deep rage, this extraordinary novel confirms his place as one of the world’s most significant living writers.

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - May 26, 2008