Ha Jin wins fiction prize

Ha Jin’s “War Trash,” a novel about Chinese POWs under American captivity during the Korean War, has won the PEN/Faulkner prize for best fiction by an American author. He will receive $15,000.

In announcing the award Wednesday, PEN/Faulkner co-chairs Robert Stone and Susan Richards Shreve praised the book as “a powerful, unflinching story that opens a window on an unknown aspect of a little-known war -- the experiences of Chinese POWs held by Americans during the Korean conflict.”