Oracle Bones tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world, as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people who are connected in one way or another to America. In addition to the author, an American journalist living in Beijing, the narrative tracks Polat, a trader and member of a forgotten ethnic minority, who moves to Washington, D.C.; 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 an ancient writing form known as oracle bones, a man whose reputation has slipped into obscurity since his suicide in the 1960's. 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.
About the Author:
Born in Columbia, Missouri, Peter Hessler now lives in Beijing and is the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker and a contributor to National Geographic.
