SOURCE: Rocca, Francis X. Review of Behind the Wall: A Journey through China, by Colin Thubron. American Spectator 22, no. 1 (January 1989): 44.

In the following excerpt, Rocca compares Behind the Wall with Paul Theroux's Riding the Iron Rooster, noting the unique ways that the authors describe their journeys through China.

Here is the first literary fruit of the new access to China: [Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux and Behind the Wall by Colin Thubron,] two first-person accounts of solitary travel on the mainland. The authors are prominent, and both divide their careers as novelists and travel writers. Paul Theroux, the more popular and more prolific, is an American. Colin Thubron is an Englishman who has won critical praise for his books on Cyprus and Western Russia. Both of them reside in England. Except for Manchuria and Tibet, where only Theroux ventures, they cover literally the same ground, but...