Peter Hessler

Country Driving (eBook, ePUB)

A Chinese Road Trip

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From the New York Times -bestselling author of Oracle Bones , a look at the human-side of China's economic revolution via a seven,zero-mile road trip-An Economist Best Book of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

"Hessler, a modern Marco Polo crossing China in a rented Jeep Cherokee, has witnessed signs and wonders worthy of a Coen brothers film. . . . Every so often, I read a book that upends my perceptions about a place. This is one of them." - Bloomberg News

In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China. Hessler writes movingly of the average people-farmers, migrant workers, entrepreneurs-who have reshaped the nation during one of the most critical periods in its modern history.

Country Driving begins with Hessler's seven,zero-mile trip across northern China, following the Great Wall, from the East China Sea to the Tibetan plateau. He investigates a historically important rural region being abandoned, as young people migrate to jobs in the southeast. Next Hessler spends six years in Sancha, a small farming village in the mountains north of Beijing, which changes dramatically after the local road is paved and the capital's auto boom brings new tourism. Finally, he turns his attention to urban China, researching development over a period of more than two years in Lishui, a small southeastern city where officials hope that a new government-built expressway will transform a farm region into a major industrial center.

Peter Hessler, whom The Wall Street Journal calls "one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China," deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.

"Hessler's genius has always been in his wry commentary and ability to transcribe the rhythms of his environment onto the page. . . . From this cast of thousands emerges a picture of great hopes tinged with sadness at what is being cast aside without second thought." - The Wall Street Journal

"A fascinating road trip through a land in transition. . . . Hessler's description of China's new drivers is hilarious. . . . Country Driving tells us as much about contemporary China even when Hessler is not on the road." - The Christian Science Monitor

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: HarperCollins e-books
• Seitenzahl: 452
• Erscheinungstermin: 27. Februar 2024
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780061969430
• Artikelnr.: 38002811

Autorenporträt

Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as the Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, and is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town, which won the Kiriyama Prize; Oracle Bones, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and, most recently, Country Driving. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2011. He lives in Cairo.

Rezensionen

"A fascinating road trip through a land in transition. . . . Hessler's description of China's new drivers is hilarious. . . . Country Driving tells us as much about contemporary China even when Hessler is not on the road." The Christian Science Monitor

Modern China has seldom been better explained than by Peter Hessler in this imaginative and illuminating book, one that gives us a steering wheel-up view of the country's giddying economic and social transformation. Tim Butcher, author of Blood River