Folio Society Published Works Number 3262
Thubron, Colin - Behind the Wall
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Thubron, Colin - Behind the Wall (Published in by The Folio Society in 2016. Introduced by Frank Dikötter. A vivid portrait of a post-Mao China, from one of the great travel writers. Quarter-bound in blocked buckram with printed paper sides. Set in Adobe Garamond. 376 pages. Frontispiece and 24 pages of colour plates, 1 integrated map. 9 1/2" x 6 3/4". Please note this edition features a new-style lightweight slipcase printed with the binding design. Thubron's sympathetic interactions with the citizens of a post-Mao China uncover stories that are sometimes surprising and often moving. He interviews the ballerina forced to clean the toilets of her own dance school by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's wife, and meets members of the Red Guard exiled to the countryside when the tide turned against them. He visits Shaoshan, the birthplace of the Great Leader, and finds it largely deserted save for a market selling cheap electronics. What Thubron unearths is a China inexorably reaching for what it has been denied. In the cities, a mercantile tradition is re-emerging; the streets are filled with photography studios and beauty parlours, the roads pressed with lorries disgorging Hitachi televisions and Phillips cassette recorders. Behind the Wall won both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 1988, and was described by Patrick Leigh Fermor as 'an achievement of great and lasting brilliance'. Frank Dikötter, a leading authority on modern China, has provided an engrossing introduction that explores the context of Thubron's travels, and praises the writer's dedication to producing a portrait untainted by his own assumptions. This edition is illustrated with a frontispiece and 24 pages of colour plates, featuring many fascinating images of China in the 1980s, and also includes an integrated map. )
