The Crazed

Written by Ha Jin

Narrated by Norm Lee

Best-selling, National Book Award-winning author Ha Jin displays his impressive storytelling gifts in this rich examination of contemporary China and the civil unrest at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Professor Yang suffers a stroke and is confined to a hospital bed. Now Jian Wan, Yang's brightest student and future son-in-law, must suspend his rigorous studies to care for his mentor. Jian dutifully keeps watch as Yang begins raving madly, condemning everything while pleading with unseen tormentors.

Has Yang gone insane, or is he no longer capable of hiding painful secrets? With his own beliefs and expectations rattled, Jian begins to see the world in a much different light - just as the fateful events at Tiananmen Square begin.

The Crazed is a daring and powerful novel that puts a human face on the brutal injustice that continues to haunt China. Narrator Norm Lee expertly voices the confusion of a young man struggling to understand the world around him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 29, 2010
• ISBN: 9781449844707

Ha Jin

HA JIN left his native China in 1985 to attend Brandeis University. He is the author of eight novels, four story collections, three volumes of poetry, and a book of essays. He has received the National Book Award, two PEN/Faulkner Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. In 2014 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in the Boston area and is director of the creative writing program at Boston University.

Reviews for The Crazed

[donna828 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is much to think about in this historical fiction book with its stark hospital room setting and the confused memories of a Chinese professor recovering from a stroke. Jian is the future son-in-law of Professor Yang, who must interrupt his PhD studies to care for his mentor. As Mr. Wang sings and rants about strange things that occurred during the Cultural Revolution, Jian begins to question whether or not he ever truly knew this man at all.

[squeakychu · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story turned out to be really interesting although I had no idea to where it was headed even halfway through the book. It started out when a soon-to-be PhD student began caring for his professor Yang who fell ill with a stroke. The student, Jian Wan, was engaged to Professor Yang's daughter Meimei who at the time was studying in Beijing for medical school entrance exams. While caring for Professor Yang and listening to his crazy talk as a stroke victim, Jian Wan made some decisions which would turn out to alter his relationship with Meimei and ultimately have him in Beijing at the time of the student uprising in Tiananmen Square.

"It's personal interests that motivate the individual and therefore generate the dynamics of history."

In this story we see how Jian Wan's actions lead him to become accused of being a counterrevolutionary, although it is personal gain by others that is really the issue.

The story of Jian Wan gives a lot of food for thought. I'm up for more books by this author based on the way this particular story is told.

[lxydis-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Huh? I remember nothing about this book.

[gary10_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Story takes place in China leading up to the events of Tianeman Square. Main character is a graduate student in literature who assumes responsibility for watching his professor mentor after a serious illness that eventually claims his life. As the professor becomes increasingly delirious from his disease he also begins to provide an unfiltered commentary on his life as a professor in China. The young graduate student confronts both the life of his professor, his career and the political reality of China. Engaging, if sometimes down beat reading.

[gwendolyndawson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set during the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989, this book explores the relationship between a prominent Chinese university professor who suffers a brain injury and Jien Wen, a favorite student and future son-in-law who becomes his caretaker. Over time and under the influence of his professor's rantings, Jien starts thinking differently about life and decides to abort his pursuit of his Ph.D. As a result, Meimei, his fiancée, promptly discards him. Unconnected from Meimei and school, Jien joins the student movement.

This book is very reflective, and much of the action occurs within Jien Wen as a result of his teacher's rantings. I found the time and place to be expertly and heartbreakingly evoked, but parts of the plot were a bit slow.

[mbergman_15 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I thought Ha Jin's Waiting was a work of genius. Again this time it's a book set in communist China where there's little action, and the main character has trouble taking charge of his life, but this character & the other main characters are less appealing & the dialog more stilted. The Tinanamen Massacre plays a role in the story, though a much more incidental one than in The Sons of Heaven.

[mattviews · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The literature department at Shanning University came to a halt at the news of Professor Yang suffering from a sudden stroke in spring 1989. The professor has been a mainsay of the department: teaches a full load, directs the M.A. program and manages to publish more papers than other faculty members. University authority assigned literature graduate student Jian Wan, who also engaged to the professor's daughter Meimei, to attend the professor at the hospital.
Jian Wan was in the midst of his preparation for Ph.D qualifying exam. Little did he expect the caring of his father-in-law-to-be would open him up to a brand new perspective of life in new China. Jian at first did not make out of what the professor ranted about. As the professor developed some Alzheimer's-like syndrome and advised Jian to abandon his Ph.D exam, his study had inevitably taken a toll. In his "altered" state, the professor sternly dismissed a scholar career as some meaningless existence. This sort of remark deeply rooted in the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution, where scholars were dubbed counter-revolutionary and marked for re-education. Professor Yang along with other scholars were purged and sent to village for "mind renewal". Jian was torn between the pursuit of real contentment and his love life. Dropout from Ph.D candidacy would mean losing Meimei, who studied medicine in Beijing and expected Jian's company as soon as he was admitted to Beijing University.

Professor Yang kept on raving about the Communist Party, pleading with some ghostly tormentors (probably the Red China Guards during Cultural Revolution), denouncing his family, criticizing a system in which a scholar was merely "just a piece of meat on a cutting board", "a screw in the machine of revolution." As his health deteriorated, the professor spewed up more shocking secret: an affair with one his graduate students whom he mentored. Whether or not the professor was telling the truth, Jian would have to make his own decision about living his life.

The novel is written with spare prose and extreme lucidity. What interests me the most is not the language but the layers of implications. Every single confession the professor makes represent the pain, the craziness, and the helplessness of post-Cultural Revolution China. Maybe this (the historical background) is what makes the book a strenuous read despite the simple language. The book connects the dot between the notorious Cultural Revolution (1956-1967) and the more recent Tienanmen massacre (1989). Professor Yang's anguish from the past (Cultural Revolution) and Jian's precarious dilemma (Tienanmen democracy walkout) only sneak a peek of the austere, oppressive life in China.