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NANJING REQUIEM
By: Ha Jin
Random House
October 2011
On Sale: October 18, 2011
Featuring: Minnie Vautrin
288 pages
ISBN: 0307379760
EAN: 9780307379764
Hardcover
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Historical | Fiction Family Life
The award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in a searing new novel that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century: the Rape of Nanjing.
In 1937, with the Japanese poised to invade Nanjing, Minnie Vautrinβan American missionary and the dean of Jinling Womenβs Collegeβdecides to remain at the school, convinced that her American citizenship will help her safeguard the welfare of the Chinese men and women who work there. She is painfully mistaken. In the aftermath of the invasion, the school becomes a refugee camp for more than ten thousand homeless women and children, and Vautrin must struggle, day after day, to intercede on behalf of the hapless victims. Even when order and civility are eventually restored, Vautrin remains deeply embattled, and she is haunted by the lives she could not save.
With extraordinarily evocative precision, Ha Jin re-creates the terror, the harrowing deprivations, and the menace of unexpected violence that defined life in Nanjing during the occupation. In Minnie Vautrin he has given us an indelible portrait of a woman whose convictions and bravery prove, in the end, to be no match for the maelstrom of history.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - November 21, 2011
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