Rent Under the Red Flag

Winner of the Flannery O Connor award, Under the Red Flag is Ha Jins second collection of stories, after the PEN/Hemingway-winning Ocean of Words. These twelve stories are set on the Russian-Chinese border during the Cultural Revolution; they display the earnestness and grandeur of human folly and, in a larger sense, form a moral history of a time and place. Time Magazine said of the original hardcover edition, 'Ha Jin's Dismount Fort teems with vivid life and people who grow ever less strange as their struggles unfold. Exotic subject matter helps, but narrative talent proves victorious.