China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power
Heaven Lake: A Novel
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. China Wakes
creative non-fiction
John Dalton. Heaven Lake
general fiction
creative non-fiction
Journalists’ books are often out-of-date before they even make it to paperback. Not so for Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s China Wakes. The husband and wife shared the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests in The New York Times; here they lay out not just the political backdrop for those momentous events, but the social, cultural and economic as well, skillfully reaching into the country’s spasmodic modern history for the necessary context. The result is an entertaining yet revealing glimpse beneath the surface of the world’s most populous nation, its charms and its contradictions. And the rich stories they tell are as helpful for understanding China today as they were when the book was published in 1994. Take its hyperactive embrace of capitalism at all costs, an economy the authors described as a “cross between Dodge City and Dickensian England,” and still painfully evident in the recent scandals over tainted milk and poisonous toys. Or consider the “tottering dictatorship” of the Communist regime, which continues to hang on thanks to the old tricks of repression and corruption. In both cases, the authors give us intimate portraits of people and places at the center of China's convulsions, often putting themselves in danger to do it. Kristof and WuDunn couldn’t have known that, one on level, little would have changed a decade-and-a-half since they wrote this book, but they were smart to put their faith in good old-fashioned journalism. ~ Andrew Park
Comments (0)John Dalton. Heaven Lake
general fiction
John Dalton’s “Heaven Lake” follows a naïve, young American missionary’s experiences late in the last century as he travels across China from Taiwan and Hong Kong all the way to the far western city of Urumchi —and back. All sorts of people interrupt the travel. The constant dreary rudeness of a government-controlled bureaucracy overhangs the entire experience. Although he is befriended by some people he meets, he is attacked and robbed by others at almost every stop along the way. Except for the setting, the interaction with people along the way could have come from “Cold Mountain.” ~ D. Martin
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