SOURCE: Mantel, Hilary. Review of Behind the Wall, by Colin Thubron. London Review of Books 9, no. 17 (1 October 1987): 21.

In the following excerpt, Mantel praises Behind the Wall for its ability to portray Chinese society in a manner that makes sense to readers.

Colin Thubron is a gifted and accomplished travel writer, whose book Among the Russians has been described as one of the best travel books written this century. To him the opening-up of China was ‘like discovering a new room in a house in which you'd lived all your life.’ He is a perceptive and honest traveller [in Behind the Wall,] aware of the burden of his own expectations, his head prone to fill with ‘savage and condescending notions’: at first it seemed that the Chinese he met were engaged in a conspiracy to fulfil every Western cliche about themselves. At an early stage, he feels intense frustration...