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Chinese author Ha Jin, the 1999 winner of the National Book Award for fiction, will give the Edwin B. Lee Lecture in Asian Studies on Tuesday, Feb. 22, at 8 p.m. in Dwight Lounge of the Bristol Campus Center. The lecture, "Language and Identity," is free and open to the public.

Ha Jin entered the literary scene in 1997 with his first story collection, Ocean of Words, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award; in 1998 he followed up with another well-received collection of short stories, Under the Red Flag, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Waiting, Ha Jin's first full-length novel, just received the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction.

Ha Jin was born in China and grew up during the Cultural Revolution. From age 14 to 19 he served in the People's Liberation Army, stationed near the northeastern border between China and the former Soviet Union. He began teaching himself middle and high-school courses in his third year in the army. When colleges remained closed during the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a telegrapher for a railroad company in Jiamiusi. While on the railroad job he began to learn English by listening to an English radio program. In 1977 he went to Heilongjiang University in Harbin, where he was assigned to study English. He received a bachelor's degree in 1981, then studied American literature at Shandong University, where he earned a master's degree in 1984. Ha Jin went to Brandeis University in 1985, where he earned a Ph.D. in English. He intended to return to China after four years, but the tragedy of Tiananmen Square in 1989 convinced him to remain in the U.S. He is currently an associate professor in English at Emory University.

Waiting has received high praise from literary critics. The New York Times Book Review said, "Luminous...we're immediately engaged by [the novel's] narrative structure, by its wry humor and by subtle startling shifts; the Chicago Tribune called it, "a simple love story that transcends cultural barriers... convincing and rich in detail;" and Publisher's Weekly said, "Moving and deeply ironic, proving again that this poet and award-winning short story writer can deliver powerful long fiction about a world alien to most Western readers."

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