Best Selling Books by Peter Hessler

A New York Times Notable book, this memoir by a journalist who lived in a small city in China is "a vivid and touching tribute to a place and its people" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review). 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. "This touching memoir of an American dropped into the center of China 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. Highly recommended." — Library Journal "This is a colorful memoir from a Peace Corps volunteer who came away with more understanding of the Chinese than any foreign traveler has a right to expect." — Booklist

An intimate and revelatory account of two generations of students in China’s heartland, by an author who has observed the country’s tumultuous changes over the past quarter century More than two decades after teaching English during the early part of China’s economic boom, an experience chronicled in his book River Town, Peter Hessler returned to Sichuan Province to instruct students from the next generation. At the same time, Hessler and his wife enrolled their twin daughters in a local state-run elementary school, where they were the only Westerners. Over the years, Hessler had kept in close contact with many of the people he had taught in the 1990s. By reconnecting with these individuals—members of China’s “Reform generation,” now in their forties—while teaching current undergrads, Hessler gained a unique perspective on China’s incredible transformation. In 1996, when Hessler arrived in China, almost all of the people in his classroom were first-generation college students. They typically came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student—an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents. At Sichuan University, many young people had a sense of irony about the regime but mostly navigated its restrictions with equanimity, embracing the opportunities of China’s rise. But the pressures of extreme competition at scale can be grueling, even for much younger children—including Hessler’s own daughters, who gave him an intimate view into the experience at their local school. In Peter Hessler’s hands, China’s education system is the perfect vehicle for examining the country’s past, present, and future, and what we can learn from it, for good and ill. At a time when anti-Chinese rhetoric in America has grown blunt and ugly, Other Rivers is a tremendous, essential gift, a work of enormous empathy that rejects cheap stereotypes and shows us China from the inside out and the bottom up. As both a window onto China and a mirror onto America, Other Rivers is a classic from a master of the form.

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 earth. That sense of time—the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a vast, ever-evolving country—is brilliantly illuminated by Peter Hessler in Oracle Bones, a book that explores the human side of China''s transformation. Hessler tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. In addition to the author, an American writer living in Beijing, the narrative follows Polat, a member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the United States in searchof freedom; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family and becomes a teacher; Emily,a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions, the earliest known writing in East Asia, and a man whosetragic story has been lost since the Cultural Revolution. All are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand. Peter Hessler excavates the past and puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers. 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.

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

The New Yorker writer''s collection of true stories highlights his perspective of Asia and the United States as both native and knowledgeable outsider. Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler''s best reportage—a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work—in two very different regions of the world. "Wild Flavor" invites readers along on a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China. One story profiles Yao Ming, basketball star and China''s most beloved export, another David Spindler, an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall. In "Dr. Don," Hessler writes movingly about a small-town pharmacist and his relationship with the people he serves. While Hessler''s subjects and locations vary, subtle but deeply important thematic links bind these pieces—the strength of local traditions, the surprising overlap between apparently opposing cultures, and the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds. "This is long-form journalism at its finest." — New York Times –bestselling author Fareed Zakaria "Hessler''s signature is an unobtrusive and humorous first-person narrator breezily guiding the reader through places at once exotic and ordinary. . . . Hessler has an acute and far-ranging talent for drawing characters." — Wall Street Journal "Showcases Hessler''s gift for telling tales of cultural difference and mutual misunderstanding in a way that is both humorous and deeply empathetic. . . . Hessler is a deeply humane teller of true tales, a keen observer, a graceful stylist." — The Atlantic

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "Extraordinary...Sensitive and perceptive, Mr. Hessler is a superb literary archaeologist, one who handles what he sees with a bit of wonder that he gets to watch the history of this grand city unfold, one day at a time.” —Wall Street Journal From the acclaimed author of River Town and Oracle Bones, an intimate excavation of life in one of the world''s oldest civilizations at a time of convulsive change Drawn by a fascination with Egypt''s rich history and culture, Peter Hessler moved with his wife and twin daughters to Cairo in 2011. He wanted to learn Arabic, explore Cairo''s neighborhoods, and visit the legendary archaeological digs of Upper Egypt. After his years of covering China for The New Yorker, friends warned him Egypt would be a much quieter place. But not long before he arrived, the Egyptian Arab Spring had begun, and now the country was in chaos. In the midst of the revolution, Hessler often traveled to digs at Amarna and Abydos, where locals live beside the tombs of kings and courtiers, a landscape that they call simply al-Madfuna: "the Buried." He and his wife set out to master Arabic, striking up a friendship with their instructor, a cynical political sophisticate. They also befriended Peter''s translator, a gay man struggling to find happiness in Egypt''s homophobic culture. A different kind of friendship was formed with the neighborhood garbage collector, an illiterate but highly perceptive man named Sayyid, whose access to the trash of Cairo would be its own kind of archaeological excavation. Hessler also met a family of Chinese small-business owners in the lingerie trade; their view of the country proved a bracing counterpoint to the West''s conventional wisdom. Through the lives of these and other ordinary people in a time of tragedy and heartache, and through connections between contemporary Egypt and its ancient past, Hessler creates an astonishing portrait of a country and its people. What emerges is a book of uncompromising intelligence and humanity--the story of a land in which a weak state has collapsed but its underlying society remains in many ways painfully the same. A worthy successor to works like Rebecca West''s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and Bruce Chatwin''s The Songlines, The Buried bids fair to be recognized as one of the great books of our time.

Emotional, highly expressive, and transcending the boundaries of travel genre, this book is very attractive to anyone who wants to know more about the Chinese soul. ─Booklist. Looking back at nine in the 1980s, China revisited the story of a small town in Sichuan that was forgotten by the world. This is a history of low-level mentality that was not understood by the Chinese but was carefully observed by American youth. This is the birthplace of He Weifei''s fictional writing and the initial starting point of the Chinese Trilogy. Fuling, Sichuan, recorded in River City, is a small city on the riverside that is generally seen in China and has nothing to do with high-level development

Een onthullend en intiem portret van twee generaties studenten in het hart van China

Correspondant du magazine New Yorker à Pékin au début des années 2000, Peter Hessler décide de passer son permis de conduire local, rejoignant les rangs des pionniers d''un boom automobile qui reflète les tensions et les paradoxes de la modernité chinoise. C''est le début d''une aventure de près d''une dizaine d''années pendant laquelle l''auteur ira à la rencontre des espoirs et des inquiétudes du peuple chinois. Au fil de ses pérégrinations, il découvre un pays qui se transforme à vue d''œil sous l''effet d''un développement capitaliste débridé. Comment les Chinois vivent-ils au quotidien cette modernisation folle et l''accélération des transformations sociales qui l''accompagne ? Dans les bourgades à l''abandon qui s''égrènent au long de la Grande Muraille jusqu''aux confins du plateau tibétain, Peter Hessler déchiffre les traces de l''histoire impériale et communiste et les défis de l''exode rural. Cherchant un refuge d''écrivain dans la campagne pékinoise, il noue une relation intime avec les habitants du village de Sancha, qu''il voit s''ouvrir - non sans contradictions - en quelques années à la consommation, à l''esprit d''entreprise et au tourisme des classes moyennes urbaines émergentes. Parti explorer les villes-champignons industrielles du sud de la Chine, il narre l''épopée picaresque d''une usine de confection, de ses patrons autodidactes et de ses ouvriers tout juste débarqués des provinces rurales de l''intérieur. Ce faisant, il nous éclaire sur les dimensions humaines de la plus grande migration économique de l''histoire. Dans un livre plein de personnages attachants, avec un sens du récit digne des grands maîtres du journalisme narratif, Peter Hessler offre un aperçu sans précédent sur les convulsions intimes d''un pays aux prises avec la " Grande Transformation " de ce début du XXIe siècle. Journaliste au New Yorker, Peter Hessler a publié plusieurs livres, salués par la critique, qui sont devenus des best-sellers aux États-Unis : River Town (2001) et Oracle Bones (2006).

China verstehen Hautnah erlebt der Journalist und Auslandskorrespondent Peter Hessler in China die Dekade der großen Reformen: den wirtschaftlichen, gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Umbruch, die millionenfache Migration vom Land in die neuen Megacities an den Küsten, die Zersetzung einer Kultur, die von uralten Traditionen geprägt ist. Hessler erzählt das Geschen aus der Perspektive der Betroffenen. Selbst die zeitgeschichtlichen Ereignisse, über die er als Korrespondent berichtet, beleuchtet er aus der Sicht einfacher Leute. Er lebt in einer kleinen Mietwohnung in den Gassen eines alten Pekinger hutong-Viertels, und von hier unternimmt er seine Reisen durch das Reich der Mitte, erlebt kulturelle Barrieren, historische Empfindlichkeiten und menschliche Schicksale. Der Wechsel von Themen, Geschichten und Erzählebenen macht Hessler''s Buch so spannend: Der Leser beginnt, China als Ganzes mit seinen unterschiedlichsten Facetten zu erleben - und zu verstehen. In den literarischen Bericht seines Reporterlebens, seiner Begegnungen und seiner Reisen mischt Hessler auch seine Exkursionen in die reiche chinesische Geschichte. Manche Episode bleibt am Ende so rätselhaft wie die Weissagungen und Prophezeiungen der Orakelknochen, der ältesten Funde chinesischer Schriftzeichen, die in Knochen oder Schildkrötenpanzer graviert wurden.