"Tender, intelligent, and insightful, [this]is the work of a writer of rare talent; it deserves to become a classic."
--- Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman

"Suffused with candor, compassion, insights, and intimate knowledge, River Town is a wonderful read."
--- Ha Jin, author of Waiting

"Hessler writes beautifully... memoir, travelogue, and astute anthropological writing woven into a book that is difficult to put down."
--- Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner and My Own Country

"RIVER TOWN is at once profoundly insightful, sharply critical, deeply admiring, thoroughly unsentimental, precisely written, and often very, very funny."
--- Tim Cahill, author of Pass the Butterworms and Road Fever