title: Ocean of Words Army Stories
author:  Ha Jin 
description: Set on China's bleak northern border in the 1970s, when Russia and China were close to war, these short stories describe the life of soldiers, professional officers, and raw recruits, living in constant proximity. In this hierarchical and politically charged world, there is even less privacy than normal in China, highlighting a fundamental difference between Chinese and Western societies. The book provides an unusually brilliant insight into the Chinese psyche, with its preoccupations with food, family, and political standing, and its ambivalent attitudes toward women and animals.
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  > THE JUDGES’ CITATION FOR
  
  > The 1997 Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction  
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  > Ha Jin’s collection of stories Ocean of Words portrays army life in China
  > with subtlety, grace, and infinite complexity. With his fine attention to
  > the manners of his time, and evident technical mastery, he has created out
  > of perverse reality, pure art. The best of these tales wreak pleasure from
  > pain and resound with an irony that distances us not from the characters but
  > from the harshness of their world. Ha Jin has christened a whole new
  > territory in American literature. This debut book, of simple style and
  > understated beauty, is occasion for real celebration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  > ALSO BY Ha Jin  
  >  
  >  
  >
  
  > FICTION  
  > Under the Red Flag  
  > In the Pond  
  > Waiting  
  > The Bridegroom  
  > The Crazed  
  > War Trash  
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  >
  
  > POETRY  
  > Between Silences  
  > Facing Shadows  
  > Wreckage
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  > Ha Jin
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  > Ocean of Words
  
  > Ha Jin left his n