Beijing Coma

Beijing Coma is a 2008 novel by Ma Jian. It was translated from Chinese by Flora Drew.^[1] The Chinese government has since banned the book.^[2] Ma has stated that he wrote the book "to reclaim history from a totalitarian government whose role is to erase it" and named the novel Beijing Coma in reference to this.^[3][4] Beijing Coma was listed as one of The New York Times "100 Notable Books of 2008".^[5]

Beijing Coma

Author	Ma Jian
Translator	Flora Drew
Language	Chinese
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication place	United States
Published in English	May 27, 2008
Media type	Print
Pages	592 ppg
ISBN	0374110174

Synopsis

The book follows the character of Dai Wei, a man who awakens from a coma to discover that ten years have passed since he was shot in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The book's narrative switches between Dai Wei's time as a non-responsive coma patient to his life before his shooting.

Reception

Critical reception for the book was positive,^[6][7][8] with Tash Aw calling it "a landmark".^[9] In Bookmarks Sep/Oct 2008 issue, a magazine that aggregates critic reviews of books, the book received a (4.00 out of 5) with the summary stating, "Even reviewers who found serious problems with Beijing Coma admired its political honesty and narrative premise".^[10]

Pankaj Mishra compared Beijing Coma with the work of writers such as Milan Kundera, Josef Škvorecký and Ivan Klíma.^[1] Michiko Kakutani praised the novel's translation while stating that the book "is desperately in need of editing".^[11]

Controversy

In April 2012 Ma protested the choice of China as the guest of honor at the London Book Fair.^[12] Ma used red paint to smear a cross over his face and attempted to present a copy of Beijing Coma to Liu Binjie, but was stopped by security. Ma called his Chinese publisher a "mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party" and claimed that he had been manhandled while trying to give Liu his book.^[13]