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Ma Jian was born in Qingdao, China in 1953. He worked as a watchmender's apprentice and a painter of propaganda boards. Later he was assigned the job of photojournalist for a state-run magazine. Aged 30, he left work and travelled for three years across China -- a journey later described in his book Red Dust, winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. He left Beijing for Hong Kong in 1987 but continued to travel to China, notably to support the pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square in 1989. After the hand-over of Hong Kong he moved to Germany and then London, where he now lives. Chatto have also published his novel, The Noodle Maker, and his story collection about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, the book which prompted the Chinese government to ban Ma Jian's work and which set him on the road to exile.
Once in a while - perhaps every 10 years, or even every generation - a novel appears that profoundly questions the way we look at the world, and at ourselves. Beijing Coma is a poetic examination not just of a country at a defining moment in its history, but of the universal right to remember and to hope. It is, in every sense, a landmark work of fiction Daily Telegraph Epic in scope but intimate in feeling. This magnificent novel generously invites us to improve our understanding -- Tom Deveson Sunday Times Monumental... splendidly translated by Flora Drew... This vivid, pungent, often blackly funny book is a mighty gesture of remembrance against the encroaching forces of silence Guardian A huge achievement ... a landmark account through fiction of a country whose rise has amazed the world, but which remains cloaked in shadows... Finely written and translated The Times The picture of China, over a span of some fifty years, is intricate and vivid... A remarkable book Literary Review
