Book Club Guide

Waiting

by Ha Jin · 1999 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The bureaucratic control of private life — waiting for permission to love
The man between two women — and what he actually owes each of them
China's Cultural Revolution era and its aftermath on ordinary people

About this book

Lin Kong, an army doctor in rural China, waits eighteen years for the bureaucratic permission to divorce his village wife Shuyu and marry his beloved Manna Wu — trapped between two women, two worlds and a system that controls every dimension of private life. Ha Jin's National Book Award-winning novel is a study in patience, repression and the cost of choices deferred across decades.

Published in 1999, Waiting won the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Ha Jin was born in China but has lived in the US since 1985, teaching creative writing at Boston University.

Discussion questions

Lin waits eighteen years for permission to leave his first marriage. How does Ha Jin develop the psychology of this prolonged waiting — and does Lin remain sympathetic?
Shuyu, the village wife, is in some ways the most sympathetic figure — a woman kept in a marriage she didn't choose. How does Ha Jin develop her?
The novel won the National Book Award. What does it do that earns this recognition — and what does the spare, controlled prose style add to the subject?
The title has multiple meanings — Lin is waiting for the divorce, Manna is waiting for Lin, and Lin may be waiting for something he cannot name. How does Ha Jin develop this polysemantic waiting?
Ha Jin writes in English about China from the position of a Chinese exile. What does this double perspective give the novel — and what does it withhold?