River Town
Two Years on the Yangtze
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On Sale:
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12/04/2006
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Formats:
Trade paperback
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A New York Times Notable Book
Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize
In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society.
Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.
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Author Extras
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Critical Praise for
River Town
“A book that is like the river itself, both lovely and rebellious, and strong beneath the stillness of its surface.”
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New York Times Book Review
“A wonderful portrait of contemporary China…[It] brings the people alive, in all their diversity.”
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Time
“Never is Hessler’s complex China, or his book, anything less than magnificent.”
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Outside
“An intimate, humorous, true-to-life portrait of modern China.”
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Vanity Fair
"A perceptive and engrossing account of an outsider in fast-changing China. . . . Elegant."
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Business Week
"A vivid and touching tribute to a place and its people."
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Kirkus (Starred Review)
"A work of grace and profundity."
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Esquire
"Beautifully crafted. . . . A soulful act of literary reportage and a classic tale of the American abroad."
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The Wall Street Journal
"Charming and insightful. . . . Poignant-hilarious . . . Lively, intelligent. . . . You will learn a great deal about real life in contemporary China in River Town, and about how that vast country appears in the eyes of a sensitive, aware, rugged young American who keeps both his eyes and his mind open."
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The New York Times
"Exquisitely reported. . . . Hessler describes the politics and the history of China in ways that I've never seen matched. . . . [He] writes beautifully and with balance."
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Gay Talese, Brill's Content
"Fascinating. . . . Vivid. . . . Penetrating. . . . A valuable book for anyone interested in assessing the progress and future of China."
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The Washington Post Book World
"Hessler writes beautifully. River Town is memoir, travelogue, and astute anthropological writing woven into a book that is difficult to put down."
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Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner and My Own Country
"If you read only one book about China, let it be this. . . . Hessler is a marvellous writer. . . . I am not the only China-watcher who will wish they had written this book."
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Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review (London)
"Moving, mesmerizing.... Transcends the boundaries of the travel genre and will appeal to anyone wanting to learn more about the heart and soul of the Chinese people."
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Booklist (starred review)
"One of the most enchanting books I've read in a very long time. . . . The quality of the view is exhilarating."
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Anne Stephenson, USA Today
"Powerful. . . . Hessler makes poignant observations about the Chinese and the ways Communism and increasing openness affects them."
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Salon.com
"Richly nuanced. . . . Hessler tells his story in a prose that is both forceful and precise."
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The Los Angeles Times
"River Town is at once profoundly insightful, sharply critical, deeply admiring, thoroughly unsentimental, precisely written, and often very, very funny."
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Tim Cahill, author of Pass the Butterworms and Road Fever
"Suffused with candor, compassion, insights, and intimate knowledge, River Town is a wonderful read."
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Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award
"Tender, intelligent, and insightful, [this] is the work of a writer of rare talent; it deserves to become a classic."
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Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman
"A lyrical account . . . larded with the tender tales and sweet insights of a personal journey. . . . Powerful. . . . A triumph of grace over artifice."
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The San Francisco Chronicle
"With patience and trust, Hessler sees that it is possible to participate in and understand local life ... River Town is a poignant and beautifully written account of a backwater about to face the onslaught of socialist modernity."
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Times Literary Supplement
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Country Driving
From the bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy, on the human side of the economic revolution in China. In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker , acquired his Chinese driver's license....
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Oracle Bones
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world. A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on...
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