Volume 55, Number 11 · June 26, 2008
Casting a Lifeline
By Francine Prose
Beijing Coma
by Ma Jian, translated from the Chinese by Flora Drew
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,586 pp., $27.50
Sixty pages or so into Ma Jian's novel Beijing Coma, the hero, Dai Wei, is troubled by the memory of a harrowing anatomy lecture that he attended as a university student. Taught by 'a celebrated cardiovascular specialist,' the class observed the dissection of the fresh corpse of a criminal whom the government had just executed (in celebration of National Day) and whose organs had been speedily harvested for transplant.
Review, 3439 words
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