The Lonely Language

But push on (or skip) to the end: You'll find an epilogue that contains 25 moving, startling "Poems by Nan Wu." These verses roughly chronicle the events in the novel, but they vibrate with the precision and intensity the long preceding narrative lacks:

I prefer to crawl around at my own pace

in the salt water of English.

As for the great ghosts in the temple,

why should I bother about their acceptance?

The light of dawn does not discriminate.

A tree, or butterfly, or stream

(unlike the dog corrupted by humans)

does not notice the color of your skin.

To write in this language is to be alone,

to live on the margin where

loneliness ripens into solitude.

There's no question that Jin's language has ripened into something extraordinary. And taken as a whole, A Free Life is a striking demonstration of the poetic success he craved. But how many readers will endure till its convincing finish? ¿

Ron Charles is a senior editor of Book World.