Even when he possesses characters rich in narrative potential, such as Lin Yifu, a Taiwanese defector who rose to become the first non-Western chief economist of the World Bank-the very embodiment of the Chinese Dream-Osnos seems unable to sketch them with vigour or passion. Where a writer’s subjectivity is called for, one only finds a reporter’s meticulous, clerkish accumulation. In Osnos’ case, the transition from long-form journalism to book writing seems to have involved barely more than an expansion in length. Not infrequently, Age Of Ambition reads like an overlong-and not particularly entertaining-New Yorker piece. He is compelled to repeatedly reintroduce his characters, judging rightly that the reader has largely forgotten about them. This does not seem an entirely successful approach, especially given the often-mechanical nature of Osnos’ prose. Characters disappear from the story, only to emerge 50 or 100 pages later. The stories of the Chinese dissidents, like nearly all the others in the book, play out in an episodic, piecemeal fashion, over hundreds of pages. View Full Image Age Of Ambition -Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith In The New China: Bodley Head, 403 pages, Rs699
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