War Trash

War Trash is a novel by Ha Jin, published in 2004. Ha Jin is a Chinese writer who has lived in the United States for many years and who writes in English, and this book takes the form of a memoir written by a fictional character rather than by its author.

Yu Yuan begins as a cadet at the Huangpu Military Academy, an institution that goes over to the Communists when they gain the upper hand in China, and he is made part of the People's Liberation Army. He leaves behind his mother and a fiancee named Tao Julan when his division is sent to Korea to fight on the Communist side in the Korean War.

His unit is encircled and destroyed and he is wounded and captured, and because he has some English he is used as a possible translator. That is how he comes to be the unofficial interpreter in the camp, caught between the two sides in the psychological warfare they conduct over the prisoners, and a great deal of the book is taken up with the world behind the barbed wire and the factions inside it.

Ha Jin drew on true historical accounts of the camps to write the novel. It won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.