Beijing Coma - Tapa blanda

"Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction" -- Tash Aw, "Daily Telegraph" "Epic in scope but intimate in feeling ... magnificent" -- Tom Deveson, "The Times" "Simultaneously a large-scale portrait of citizens writing in the grip of the party and the state and a strikingly intimate study of the fragility of the body and the persistence of self and memory" -- Chandrahas Choudhury, "Observer" "[Beijing Coma] merits the term 'masterpiece'. . . . [T]he narrative strategy succeeds at creating suspense page after page and lends a poignant, inexorable flavour to the events after the massacre." -- "The Vancouver Sun" "A work of fiction so realistic that it can be read as a tragic memoir of a time of hope, turmoil and atrocity. . . . An immaculate lesson in history, it is a vivid reminder that all things change and all is swept away." -- "The Owen Sound Sun Times""Already notorious for writing novels banned in his homeland due to their criticism of China's policies on human rights and Tibet, the now London-based Ma Jian here launches his most sustained and intricate indictment of his former country. . . . As novelist, he painstakingly recreates the cycle of idealism, arrogance, confusion and despair that characterized the experience of demonstrators on the ground in [Tiananmen] square." -- "Toronto Star ""[Beijing Coma] will make wavesacross the world. . . . Ma combines a gift for densely detailed, panoramic fiction with a resonant prophetic voice. . . . Beijing Coma" "may have huge documentary value, but it grips and moves as epic fiction above all . . . Beijing Coma has the visceral physicality that stamps all of Ma Jian's work. He is a poet of the body in all its ecstasies, embarrassments and agonies." -- "The Independant" "A huge achievement . . . a landmark account through fiction of a country whose rise has amazed the world, but which remains cloaked in shadows. . . . finely written and translated." -- "The Times ""This is an epic yet intimate work that deserves to be recognised and to endure as "the "great Tiananmen novel."-- "Financial Times ""This timely yet dazzling piece of fiction will be seen simply for what it is: a modern literary masterpiece."-- "Sunday Express ""This vivid, pungent, often blackly funny book is a mighty gesture of remembrance against the encroaching forces of silence." -- "Guardian ""Astonishingly brave... the most important Chinese book since Wild Swans." -- "London Lite" "[A] bleak, wrenching generational saga . . . Ma Jian achieves startling effects through Dai Wei's dispassionate narration, making one man's felled body a symbol of lost possibility." -- "Publishers Weekly ""One of the most important and courageous voices in Chinese literature." -- Gao Xingjian, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature "Ma Jian is arguably his country's essential writer." -- "The Globe and Mail"

As the millennium draws near, Dai Wei, a pro-democracy protestor who was shot during the demonstration at Tiananmen Square in 1989, has been in a coma for almost a decade. As he wakes, he realises that the rich imaginative world afforded to him as a coma patient is a startling contrast with the death-in-life of the world outside.