Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China
by:
Peter Hessler (author)
A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world...
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A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In a narrative that gracefully moves between the ancient and the present, the East and the West, Hessler captures the soul of a country that is undergoing a momentous change before our eyes.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780060826598 (0060826592)
Publish date: May 8th 2007
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 528
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
History,
Literature,
Cultural,
Book Club,
Culture,
Politics,
Asian Literature,
Asia,
China
From the tiny photo on the back cover of "Oracle Bones", Peter Hassler looks like a friend of mine, A., when I was at the university.One day, around 10 years ago, I met this fellow out of our "Media and communication" department and I told him that he should have tried doing some internship in order...
In some ways I enjoyed this more than Hessler's first China book, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Oracle Bones alternates between personal, historical, and political narratives that usefully reflect each other. It is often funny and frequently poignant. Read [i]River Town[/i] first.
(I suddenly realized, on reaching page 454, what it was about this book..., this author.... Though the writing is non-fiction, it was like reading Borges...)This is a beautiful, surprising, and stunningly good book -- much richer than one could imagine. For anyone interested in the context and tex...
Found it kinda boring.
Parts of this book I loved and parts I wasn’t interested in at all. Hessler wanders all over the place, talking to people in China, average people, oddball people. Hessler showed me things about China I’d never thought existed, including ethnic minorities and the slow economic changes occurring.
13 years ago
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