Few writers have appeared on the American literary scene to such sudden acclaim as the Chinese émigré Ha Jin. His first short-story collection about life in the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Ocean of Words (1996), won the Hemingway/PEN Award for First Fiction in 1996; his subsequent short-story collection depicting village life in China during the Cultural Revolution, Under the Red Flag` (1997), won the 1997 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. His stories have also garnered three Pushcart Prizes, and four were selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories volumes for 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001. Along with three books of poetry--Between Silences (1990), Facing Shadows (1996), and Wreckage (2001)--Jin has published two novels: In the Pond (1998), a dark comedy about a man's rebellion against unfair policies within his village commune, and Waiting (1999), the story of a couple forced to wait eighteen years to marry, which won the National Book Award for Fiction...