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CHINA GOES MODERN – BUT MIND THE GAPS

 

 

a book review essay for Peacehawks, by James V. Arbuckle

 

The books reviewed in this essay are:

The Man from Beijing, by Henning Mankell, Harvill Secker, London, 2008

Lost in Translation, by Nicole Mones, Delta, New York, 1998

Forbidden Fruit – 1980 Beijing (A Memoir), by Gail Pellett, Van Dam, New York, 2016

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The three books discussed here, two novels and a memoir, give us differing but intersecting views of the colossus of our age: China.  The two works of fiction, one a crime novel and the other a romance, are in fact both historical novels: both are closely linked to facts, but both provide a degree of intimacy and insight that  straight historical work usually cannot.  However, as we will note later, the ever-engaging Gail Pellett achieves a novelistic immediacy and intimacy in her Memoir.

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