Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China - Peter Hessler - 2010
By: Peter Hessler
Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 03-23-10
Language: English
Genre: Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Audible Studios
Format: mp3 64/22.05 mono
Publisher's Summary
A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people. 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.
Near the beginning of Peter Hessler's new book about China, Oracle Bones, an archaeology team drills small holes in a field in Anyang, looking for the walls of an ancient settlement. Every core sample they remove is examined for signs of buried structures or artifacts that will help the archaeologists understand what's beneath the surface.
Made of cattle shoulder blades or turtle undershells, the oracle bones were heated until they cracked, making a sound that supposedly captured voices from departed ancestors. The cracks were then interpreted by diviners or the king himself.
He interviews aging archaeologists and the small fraternity of oracle-bone experts. In doing so, he unearths moving stories of the betrayal and pain that China's intellectuals endured from the communist victory through Mao's vicious Cultural Revolution. The intellectuals who survived are defined by this past, unlike most of the other characters in the book, who seem unmoored from China's history.
The oracle bones, of course, are metaphors for the loosely connected tales Hessler himself has assembled here; read together, they help us divine something essential about the nature of China today.
©2007 Peter Hessler (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Critic Reviews
“A brilliant observer with a novelist’s ear for character and dialogue, Hessler is both fascinating and funny.” ( Entertainment Weekly)
“A remarkable travelogue documenting aspects of a country still little understood.” ( Kirkus)
“Engaging.... Acutely observed, moving, frequently funny and a perspicacious X-ray of China’s zeitgeist.” ( South China Morning Post)
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