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The Boat Rocker
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  • Published: 30 October 2017
  • ISBN: 9780804170376
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $35.00

The Boat Rocker

A Novel

Formats & editions
EBook
25 Oct 2016
Audiobook
25 Oct 2016
Paperback
30 Oct 2017
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From the universally admired, award-winning author of Waiting and War Trash: an urgent, timely novel that follows an aspiring author, an outrageous book idea, and a lone journalist's dogged quest for truth in the Internet age.

New York, 2005. Chinese expatriate Feng Danlin is a fiercely principled reporter at a small news agency whose website is read by Chinese all over the world. Danlin’s explosive exposés have made him legendary among readers—and feared by Communist officials. But his newest assignment may be his undoing: investigating his ex-wife, Yan Haili, an unscrupulous novelist who has willingly become a pawn of the Chinese government in order to realize her dreams of literary stardom.
 
Haili’s scheme infuriates Danlin both morally and personally—he will do whatever it takes to expose her as a fraud. But in outing Haili, he is also provoking her powerful political allies, and he will need to draw on all of his journalistic cunning to come out of this investigation with his career—and his life—unscathed. A brilliant, darkly funny story of corruption, integrity, and the power of the pen, The Boat Rocker is a tour de force.
  • Published: 30 October 2017
  • ISBN: 9780804170376
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 240
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

Ha Jin

Ha Jin grew up in mainland China and served in the People’s Liberation Army in his teens for five years. After leaving the army, he worked for three years at a railroad company in a remote northeastern city, Jiamusi, and then went to college in Harbin, majoring in English. He has published in English ten novels, four story collections, four volumes of poetry, a book of essays, and a biography of Li Bai. His novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ha Jin is William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor in English and Creative Writing at Boston University, and he has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His writing has been translated into more than thirty languages. Ha Jin’s novel The Woman Back from Moscow was published by Other Press in 2023.
portrait photo of Ha Jin

Also by Ha Jin

Looking for Tank Man
The Woman Back from Moscow: In Pursuit of Beauty
A Song Everlasting
The Banished Immortal
The Boat Rocker - A Novel
A Map of Betrayal
Nanjing Requiem
See all

Praise for The Boat Rocker

  • "A delicious satire.... One of the most unsettling books about the moral dimensions of modern journalism.... Rocking the boat is not just a right; it's a sacred duty--no matter where it leads." --The Washington Post
  • "Savage satire.... [Ha Jin is] a writer of simple yet powerful gifts." --The New York Times Book Review
  • "Convincing as well as timely. . . . [Has] a powerful moral core." --The Christian Science Monitor
  • "In crafting a memorable hero and a narrative that is both entertaining and thought-provoking, [Jin] affirms the value of fiction itself as...a powerful vehicle for the truths of our times." --The Boston Globe
  • "The narrative framework is fertile ground for Jin's brilliant and nuanced political and social observations.... It feels like a miracle--and a splendid irony--that an immigrant writer can fashion a novel with such quintessentially American themes from the front lines of the Chinese diaspora." --The Seattle Times

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