Oracle Bones A Journey between China and the WestFirst edition by Hessler, Peter - 2006

London: John Murray, 2006. First edition, 2006. Hardback. 491pp. Black cloth boards with silver lettering to spine. Dust jacket. Oracle Bones tells its engaging and compelling story through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. The author himself is a Westerner, a journalist living in Beijing. The narrative tracks his story along with that of Polat, a trader and member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to the West in search of political freedom and a new life; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate family in a remote village; 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 whose mysterious story has been lost since his suicide years ago, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. All of them migrants, emigrants or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand. Hessler helps us discover where the great influential cultures of East and West intersect, but also how the conjunction of past and present creates today's China - and how people create meaning out of chaotic world events. Book condition very good. Light toning and spotting to upper text block edge. Dust jacket very good. Unclipped and with just a slight amount of edge wear. Jacket faintly soiled.