Casting a Lifeline
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,586 pp. This article was first published in the June 26, 2008 issue of Sixty pages or so into Ma Jian’s novel Beijing Coma, the hero, Dai Wei, is troubled by the memory of a harrowing anatomy lecture that he attended as a university student. Taught by “a celebrated cardiovascular specialist,” the class observed the dissection of the fresh corpse of a criminal whom the government had just executed (in celebration of National Day) and whose organs had been speedily harvested for transplant. Dai Wei’s moral revulsion was tinged with personal anxiety, for this...
Source: chinafile.com