Our June Author: Ma Jian

A few links to help us get to know our June author, Ma Jian (The Noodle Maker). Here's a short Guardian profile and a longer reflection from the New Zealand Listener. Beat references come up a lot with this author,

References to the Beat Generation’s favourite roaming forefathers, particularly Walt Whitman, pop up constantly in Red Dust. When Ma read through the first proof of the first Chinese translation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl in the 1980s, with its lengthy Whitmanesque breaths, he sighed then, as he does now: “Howling out loud in anguish? Now that would be heaven.

Here's a CNN piece that contrasts two generations of Chinese authors. Finally, here's a first-person reflection from the homesick exile.