Ward Four: A Novel of Wartime China

About

Mr. Lu checks into the third-class ward of a rural hospital during the war against Japan. His bed was recently vacated by a dead man. Three more deaths will follow during his stay. The ward becomes a microcosm of wartime China: patients who can afford it order food from outside; those who can't go hungry. A young nurse performs her duties with exhausted kindness. The doctors do what they can, which isn't enough. Ba Jin's novel observes institutional failure at the most intimate scale — a hospital where people come to be healed and instead learn exactly how much their lives are worth to the system responsible for preserving them. A quiet, devastating novel about the ward where the dying teach the living what their country has become.