Jin's most popular work to date is his novel Waiting (1999). Like most of his works, this one deals with Chinese citizens trying to reconcile their basic human instincts with the requirements of a powerful government, as a doctor in the Chinese army returns to his village year after year to ask his wife for a divorce so that he can marry the woman he truly loves.

Samplings of works by most major Chinese writers of the twentieth century are included in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, edited by Joseph S. M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt and published by Columbia University Press in 1996.

Lulu Wang's acclaimed novel The Lily Theater is about a young girl growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution. The book looks at the class system that the government tried to dismantle and how it...