Consisting of three interconnected essays, The Writer as Migrant sets Ha Jin's own work and life alongside those of other literary exiles, creating a conversation across cultures and between eras. He employs the cases of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Chinese novelist Lin Yutang to illustrate the obligation a writer feels to the land of their birth, while Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov--who, like Ha Jin, adopted English for their writing--are enlisted to explore a migrant author's conscious choice of a literary language. A final essay draws on V. S. Naipaul and Milan Kundera to consider the ways in which our era of perpetual change forces a migrant writer to reconceptualize the very idea of home. Throughout, Jin brings other celebrated writers into the conversation as well, including W. G. Sebald, C. P. Cavafy, and Salman Rushdie--refracting and refining the very idea of a literature of migration.
Simultaneously a reflection on a crucial theme and a fascinating glimpse at the writers who compose Ha Jin's mental library, The Writer as Migrant is a work of passionately engaged criticism, one rooted in departures but feeling like a new arrival.
"[The Writer as Migrant] demands to be read slowly, and savored. You may find yourself pausing frequently to think about some especially trenchant observation and to reflect on the generosity and intelligence with which [Ha Jin] helps us understand what makes us different from, and similar to, the people with whom we co-exist on our endlessly fascinating, precious, and increasingly populated world."
--Francine Prose "Washington Post Book World""Jin's book is lucid and original. No author of his stature has treated this subject in such an inclusive manner. Highly Recommended."
-- "Choice"