The Call (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Hersey
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Plot: Historical chronicle
- Time of Work: 1878-1981
- Setting: Upstate New York and northeast China
- Principal Characters: David Treadup (T’ao Tu Hsien-sheng), Emily Treadup, James B. Todd
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Communism or communists, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Revolutions, Missions or missionaries, China or Chinese people, East and West, Modernization, Prisoners of war
- Locales: New York, China
The Novel
The Call follows the dedicated life of David Treadup, who leaves rural New York as a young man of twenty-seven and devotes his life to the welfare of the Chinese people. In the background of Treadup’s career are the tumultuous events that have changed Chinese life drastically in the twentieth century, and The Call is thus also an impressionistic history of modern China through the Communist Revolution. John Hersey divides his seven-hundred-page narrative into ten sections, each focusing on an important phase of Treadup’s life. Sketches of Treadup’s...
[The entire page is 2322 words long]
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