Emory Professor/Author Wins 1999 National Book Award for Fiction

Emory creative writing professor Xuefei Jin, who writes under the name Ha Jin, won the 1999 National Book Award for fiction, the National Book Foundation announced last night. Jin's novel, "Waiting," was released by Pantheon Books on Oct. 4.

"Waiting" is a lyrical love story spanning 17 years, set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution. Kirkus Reviews described it as "a deceptively simple tale, written with extraordinary precision and grace." The novel's protagonist, Lin Kong, is trapped in a loveless arranged marriage, thus he struggles under the rules of Communist society and the demands of ancient tradition in his longing to marry his lover, Manna Wu.

Needless to say, Jin was thrilled to have won, but the self-effacing author is more excited about what this means for his book than him personally. "This is a relief for my book, not for myself," he says of the attention the award traditionally brings.

Jin also has been honored with the 1997 PEN/Hemingway Award for his short story collection "Ocean of Words" and the 1998 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction for his story collection "Under the Red Flag." He has published two books of poetry, "Between Silences" and "Facing Shadows," and a novella, "In the Pond."

Jin is a native of China who spent five years in the People's Liberation Army during the 1970s, an experience he draws from frequently in his writing, where he taught himself traditional high school academics in addition to the required Marxism. He then spent three years working for a railroad in remote northeast China which allowed him to learn English from a radio program; he dreamed of reading Friedrich Engels' "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" in the English original. When colleges reopened in 1977 following the Cultural Revolution, Jin studied American literature at Shandong University. He came to the United States to pursue a Ph.D. at Brandeis University with the intention of returning home to teach college, but the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre changed his plans. " I knew that I could never write freely, and I had the opportunity to stay, so I made a decision to stay and write only in English," says Jin.

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