Oracle bones : a journey between China and the West

"Oracle Bones" tells its engaging and compelling story through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.

The author himself is a Westerner living as a journalist 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; William Jefferson Foster, who grew up in an illiterate village; Anne, a migrant factory worker in a city without a past; and Chen Mengjia, a mysterious scholar of oracle-bone inscriptions (the earliest known writing in East Asia) whose story has been lost since his suicide forty years ago.

All of them are migrants, emigrants, or wanderers who find themselves far from home, their lives dramatically changed by historical forces they are struggling to understand.

Hessler excavates the past in search of meaning, but his intimate approach puts a remarkable human face on the history he uncovers.

We discover with him not only where the great, influential cultures of East and West intersect, but also how people create meaning out of chaotic world events.