Nanjing Requiem: A Novel

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The National Book Award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash returns to his homeland in this searing novel that retells one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century- the rape of Nanjing. It's 1937, and the Japanese are poised to invade Nanjing. Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary and the dean of Jinling Women's College, decides 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 the behalf of the hapless victims. Yet even when order and civility are restored, she remains deeply embattled, always haunted by the lives she could not save. At once a searing story that unfurls during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century and an indelible portrait of a singular and brave woman, Nanjing Requiem is another tour de force from the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting.

Reviews

Subtle and powerful. The New York Times Book Review

Crushingly beautiful, achingly sad. . . . What you most remember, once you put down the book, is not agony and hopelessness, not darkness and blood, but rather the reach of human goodness. The Philadelphia Inquirer

Remarkable. . . . Profoundly moving. The Plain Dealer

Wonderful. . . . [Ha Jins] control over his characters is masterful; Japanese characters can be kindly, victims can be stridently impatient for vengeance. All are human. Washington Independent Review of Books

Nanjing Requiem is both plainspoken and revelatory, the saddest of Ha Jins novels. After this past decade of armed conflict, which has put millions of civilians at risk, his reminder of the human costs of war is also, unfortunately, timely. The Boston Globe

An affecting, insightful portrait. The Oregonian

[Minnies] humanizing voice and struggling perspective personalize the story and provide an element of reasonableness and decency amid so much savagery. . . . Harrowing. Wall Street Journal

[Ha Jins] spare prose can achieve a masterful precision. . . . Demonstrate[s] how humans cope when forced together in wartime. . . . Testament to the bravery of women in the most horrifying of circumstances. The Independent (UK)

Exquisitely painful. . . . Creates an unforgettable impression. St. Louis Dispatch

Haunting. . . . He has honed a distinctively dry, laconic prose style. Financial Times

Should be required reading for anyone who isn't familiar with what happened at Nanjing. . . . Courageously and unflinchingly, Ha Jin has taken an important step in remembering both the victims and the heroes of that senseless slaughter. Associated Press


Delivers glimpses of the massacre in all its reeling madness: the young woman who is driven insane by her manifold violations; the ways violence can smite the spirit, even when the body is spared; the sight of shells bursting in the air like black blossoms. The Washington Post

Author Bio

Ha Jin's previous books include the internationally bestselling Waiting, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Award; War Trash, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award; the story collections Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; and three books of poetry.