Beijing Coma, By Ma Jian
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.This fearless epic of history and memory establishes the exiled Ma Jian as the Solzhenitsyn of China's forgetful drive towards world-domination.
Above all, this is the definitive Tiananmen Square novel. Ma not only delivers a dramatic, blow-by-blow narrative of the student protest movement in Beijing and its bloody suppression. He exposes the still-raw wounds from Mao's Cultural Revolution that lay behind the 1989 revolt.
Then, via the device of a comatose survivor stranded in a changing land, we see the city and country flee its hidden trauma into a long aftermath of wealth-creating mania.
Yet, as the Olympics nears and the family flat where he guards this past falls to the bulldozers, this orgy of consumption begins to fray into renewed dissent.
For all its documentary value, this true landmark work – in Flora Drew's engrossing translation – always grips and moves as fiction on a human scale.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments