Pamela Druckerman, journalist, columnist, documentary producer and author of five books including of Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, writes:
Peter Hessler has written a wryly observed, deeply empathetic portrait of modern China, told through the lives of his Chinese students and his own daughters’ experiences at a local school. Hessler avoids sweeping conclusions, trusting that the country’s real story emerges from microhistories, everyday conversations and amusing glimpses into daily life. This is journalism at its most humane, and (especially for those of us who aren’t Sinologists) a perfect primer on what China is really like.
Other Rivers: A Chinese Education by Peter Hessler will be published in the English language by Penguin Press in North America in July 2024 and by Atlantic Books in the UK and ANZ, with translation editions forthcoming as well.
Peter Hessler is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000-2007 and Cairo correspondent from 2011-2016. He is also a contributing writer for National Geographic. He is the author of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, which won the Kiriyama Book Prize, Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present, which was New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award, Country Driving: A Journey through China from Farm to Factory, Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West, and The Buried: An Archaeology of the Egyptian Revolution. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011.