Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West
Hessler started out wanting to be a novelist, then drifted into journalism, taking with him a deep appreciation for storytelling and a love for the details of life. As Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker for seven years, he got a firsthand look at the travails of its modernization. In this collection of stories from China, Japan, Nepal, and the U.S., he offers an engaged outsider&#x2019;s perspective, as absorbed with meeting people&#x2014;including migrants and transplants&#x2014;as with detailing geography and politics. The collection rambles, with no chronological order, as Hessler relays visits to competing restaurants in Guangdong Province famous for their rat dishes; the closing of the Three Gorges Dam; how the Olympics brought even more radical change to Beijing, a city already grappling with sudden modernity; hiking the Great Wall of China with an American expatriate; the peaceful transition of Chinese leadership; and visiting a Peace Corps enthusiast in Nepal pushing for a higher profile for the overseas service agency. Hessler also profiles basketball player Yao Ming, the pride of China. --Vanessa Bush