River Town

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by Peter Hessler


  —Kirkus Reviews

  “If you should 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 he had written this book.”

  —Jonathan Mirsky, The Literary Review (London)

  “An intimate, humorous, true-to-life portrait of modern China.”

  —Vanity Fair

  “River Town is at once profoundly insightful, sharply critical, deeply admiring, thoroughly unsentimental, precisely written, and often very, very funny.”

  —Tim Cahill, author of Pass the Butterworms and Road Fever

  “A lyrical account…larded with the tender tales and sweet insights of a personal journey…. A triumph of grace over artifice.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Richly nuanced…. Hessler tells his story in a prose that is both forceful and precise.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “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.”

  —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

  “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.”

  —Gay Talese, Brill’s Content

  “Never is Hessler’s complex China, or his book, anything less than magnificent.”

  —Outside magazine

  “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.”

  —Booklist

  “One of the most enchanting books I’ve read in a very long time…. The quality of the view is exhilarating.”

  —Anne Stephenson, USA Today

  “Hessler writes beautifully. River Town is memoir, travelogue, and astute anthropological writing woven into a book that is difficult to put down.”

  —Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner and My Own Country

  “Powerful…. Hessler makes poignant observations about the Chinese and the ways Communism and increasing openness affects them.”

  —Salon.com

  “Suffused with candor, compassion, insights, and intimate knowledge, River Town is a wonderful read.”

  —Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award

  Copyright

  Poem in Chapter Twelve from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  RIVER TOWN. Copyright © 2001 by Peter Hessler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  First Perennial edition published 2002.

  First Harper Perennial edition published 2006.

  Chinese Calligraphy by Dai Xiaohong

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

  Hessler, Peter.

  River town: two years on the Yangtze / Peter Hessler.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-06-019544-4

  1. Fuling (Sichuan Sheng, China)—Description and travel. 2. Hessler, Peter, 1969– —Journeys—China—Fuling (Sichuan Sheng). I. Title.

  DS796.F855 H47 2001

  915.1'38—dc21 00-049872

  EPub Edition © June 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-202898-3

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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