Country Driving is Peter Hessler's account of his travels through China over the past decade - from the fortified towns along the Great Wall in the north, to near inaccessible hilltop villages and the entrepreneurial cities of the south-east, where factory start-ups are a dime a dozen.
This is the story of a nation modernising at great pace, and of the lives of ordinary Chinese caught up in that modernisation. With eloquence and humour Hessler takes us on the road less travelled, showing us a China rarely glimpsed by outsiders.