The River's Tale
A Year on the Mekong
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · January 7, 2003
Along the Mekong, from northern Tibet to Lijiang, from Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Can Lo, I moved from one world to another, among cultural islands often ignorant of each other’s presence.
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- Who it’s for
- A year along the Mekong brings its shifting worlds and human stories into view.
- Themes
- Mekong communities, Cultural change, People's struggles and victories
- Genres
- Southeast Asia Travel, Southeast Asian History, Travel Writing
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Along the Mekong, from northern Tibet to Lijiang, from Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Can Lo, I moved from one world to another, among cultural islands often ignorant of each other’s presence. Yet each island, as if built on shifting sands and eroded and reshaped by a universal sea, was re-forming itself, or was being remolded, was expanding its horizons or sinking under the rising waters of a cultural global warming.
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It was a journey between worlds, worlds fragiley conjoined by a river both ominous and luminescent, muscular and bosomy, harsh and sensuous. From windswept plateaus to the South China Sea, the Mekong flows for three thousand miles, snaking its way through Southeast Asia. Long fascinated with this part of the world, former New York Times correspondent Edward Gargan embarked on an ambitious exploration of the Mekong and those living within its watershed. The River’s Tale is a rare and profound book that delivers more than a correspondent’s account of a place. It is a seminal examination of the Mekong and its people, a testament to the their struggles, their defeats and their victories.
Worlds Along the River
A year along the Mekong brings its shifting worlds and human stories into view.
Come here for
- A correspondent’s eye on the Mekong and its watershed communities
- Travel across cultural worlds linked by one river
Expect
- Reflective attention to struggle, defeat, and victory
- A river described as harsh, sensuous, and reshaping
Where it sits
| Southeast Asia Travel | 76% |
|---|---|
| Travel Writing | 35% |
| Southeast Asian History | 28% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Rivers
- China Travel
- Southeast Asia Travel
- Authors
- Edward Gargan
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- January 7, 2003
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Mekong communities · Cultural change · People's struggles and victories
- Reading lane
- Rivers