'Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.' For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young - a humble and touchingly loyal woman - whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different. Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of wisdom. Waiting charms and startles with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.
- ISBN10 0099452251
- ISBN13 9780099452256
- Publish Date 1 January 2098 (first published 21 September 1999)
- Publish Status Postponed Indefinitely
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Vintage
- Edition Media tie-in
- Format Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
- Pages 320
- Language English