China: A Literary Companion - Hardcover

Presenting multifaceted views of China, this latest addition to the Literary Companion travel series is a colorful, pictorial tapestry, effected by interweaving dazzling literary fragments with text by China experts Grayling and Whitefield. Undertaking to survey so complex a nation and people is difficult at best, but the writers succeed in unveiling a vast store of images and impressions of both China's immense landscape and its extensive history. Auden and Isherwood, Maugham and Theroux all provide commentary, as does Teilhard de Chardin, who breathily describes the Mongolian steppes and northern regions made impassable by crevasses. Reports of cities visited, routes traveled, delights tasted, poets quoted, and perceptions--how Westerners have viewed Chinese and vice versa--await readers in a most refined and literate guide to a country not easily penetrated. Alice Joyce