PositiveThe Asian Review of BooksSet in New York, Ha Jin’s new novel, The Boat Rocker, takes place 'a week before the fourth anniversary of 9/11.' Much of the novel’s power derives from the uncanny parallels between the issues faced by its central figure, a truth-seeking online journalist in the era of Hu Jintao and George W Bush, and all of us, in our Trumpian moment, as we struggle with its penchant for 'alternative facts' ... China and its political system figure prominently in his writing, often cast in a dynamic tension with the US ...is hard to miss the irony that 'truth' today is potentially as compromised and blurred in the US now as Ha Jin would have us believe it has been for a long time in China ... Thought-provoking and fast-paced, The Boat Rocker is a perfect read for this anxious winter of discontent.
