Sketches in Winter by Charles Foran
Finalist for The QSPELL Prize for Non-Fiction in 1992
Charles Foran, a Canadian teaching at a Beijing college at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre, gives us a fresh look and a unique perspective on a nation that continues to elude easy understanding. Filled with detail affectionately noted and beautifully rendered, Sketches in Winter takes us into the lives, the hopes and disappointments of young Chinese women and men as they struggle to find their place in a country crushed by the weight of its own history and stifled by an onerous political ideology. Whether it’s serving a meal of tortillas to a group of skeptical teachers, playing basketball with a team that includes a spy, or wandering through the city streets during a raging sandstorm, Charles Foran parts the curtain that has fallen over Beijing since June 1989 and allows us a memorable glimpse of a nation and its citizens at a crossroads in history.
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