Beijing Coma - Rilegato

"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 waves across 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