The characters in Ma Jian's novel talk of oppressed Tibetans, of foreign television crews in Beijing, of hosting the Olympics and of human rights. Beijing Coma sometimes sounds as up to date as next month's news, but it's much more than fictionalised documentary. Epic in scope but intimate in feeling, it uses one man's life to tell the story of China in the latter part of the 20th century. The author keeps several tones of voice in equilibrium - roomy down-to-earth narrative, thoughtful ironic commentary and concise poetic aphorism. He speaks with powerful persuasive eloquence for a “generation of orphans”.

Dai Wei is a PhD student in Beijing who joins and then helps organise the demonstrations leading up to the Tiananman Square massacre, during which he is shot in the head. Now “buried alive inside my body”, he lies in a coma, unable to act for himself but full of acute sensations and reminiscences. Ma Jian skilfully weaves together two colourful time strands - Dai Wei's account of his life from childhood until the fateful date of June 4, 1989, and the immense transformations that take place in China in its aftermath, relayed by friends who come to visit the invalid.

Hundreds of pages on the politics and personalities of the student movement communicate a growing feeling of urgency and anger. Numerous issues - whether to campaign against corruption or for freedom, how best to challenge the authorities, what slogans to choose for banners, who might be police informers - are presented in immense and sympathetic detail. We see the square develop into a country within a country, with its own food-distribution system, microclimate, juxtaposed communities and - students being students - “a lot of shagging going on in those tents”. When blood is finally shed, the ominously slow preparation makes it all the more shocking.

The sense of history being made reaches into the future and back into the past. Dai Wei summons up unforgettable horrors from the time of Mao's rule - an old man scooping undigested raw yams from a cesspit and eating them, people buried alive, women forced into abortion and cannibalism. Lying comatose as the millennium approaches, he hears how his comrades have coped. One has killed himself after an act of self-denunciation, some have gone into exile, while others embrace the opportunity to make fortunes in software and property development. The vignettes form a complex mosaic that shifts as we read.

Dai Wei's condition doesn't shelter him from a flood of sensory recollections and experiences. Through sex you can “leave your body behind” and his erotic memories are both pungent and poignant. Although he speaks of “the mixture of phenylethylamine and serotonin that is known as love”, psychology can usually trump physiology. He registers dozens of smells that recall lovers, family incidents or street scenes: public latrines and pencil shavings, tree bark and charcoal smoke, fried celery and brown sugar, limewashed walls and stale gunpowder.

Another China comes alive in The Book of Mountains and Seas, which remains Dai Wei's favourite reading despite the alternative temptations of Stendhal, Freud, Kafka and Marquez. It is a folk geography, filled with stories of magic, beauty, reincarnation, strange beasts, healing plants and cruel, capricious gods, where he can escape from his trapped body and “wander through the imaginary landscape for hours”. When he listens to Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, he is nearly “drawn through the gates of death” by its blissful clarity. To seek transcendence, even while lying motionless, is another way to challenge the power of despotism and death.

There are episodes that will seem strange to British readers. Did students march through the streets yelling, “Practice is the criterion by which truth must be tested” or “Let Zhao Ziyang take over as Chairman of the Central Military Commission”? Are there urine connoisseurs who discuss taste, colour and medicinal properties with their “fellow enthusiasts” or healers who invoke fox spirits from graveyards to counter the effects of green diarrhoea? It seems so.

Dai Wei says that he and his friends, despite their courage, “had little understanding of Chinese history”. This magnificent novel generously invites us to improve our understanding in many ways.

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew
Chatto £17.99 pp592

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide