An impressive collection of stories, all set among Red Army troops stationed along the Russian border. The stories are told in a deceptively modest style (deceptive in the sense that there doubtless was a tremendous amount of editing and whittling-down that went into these stories' making), and they range in tone from the comic to the brutal. Jin is able to evoke ambiguous psychological states, subtle relationships, and bleak landscapes in prose that never shows off or calls attention to itself. At their best, these stories recall the stories of Hemingway, Chekhov, and, from time to time, Nabokov.
Ha Jin the author of Waiting also shows a create use of mutiple short stories in one book. He discuss the hardships that soldiers had faced during that time between the Russians and the Chinese. Each chapter discuss how each soldier feel and interact with certain things during the war. The war brought many hardships and problem to many people. There were also corrupted government officials that lead people into the wrong path. Each story is unfold in a way that describes an event of the People's Army (Chinese) went through and the challenges they face through their life time.
What do You think about Ocean Of Words: Stories (1998)?
Ha Jin shows how the communist army is so focused on infiltration that might destroy their ideology that they erase human emotion and in a sense destroy their humanity. In communism, reason is king and emotions are besides the point even in matters of love. The book also showcases the effects of fear and suspicion and its effects on morale in communism. In the end, this was a good book with insights to the communist way of thinking. TOO LATE:Communist soldiers were not allowed to have affairs wi
—Patrick
