In this book Professor Arberry describes the lives and labours of six great scholars - Simon Ockley, Sir William Jones, E. W. Lane, E. H. Palmer, E.G. Browne and R. A Nicholson - men who were devoted to building a bridge between the peoples of Europe and Asia. To these biographical essays, Arberry has appended a fragment of candid autobiography and an eloquent plea for the further encouragement of Oriental studies.

DIVA collection of essays arguing for a global and economically based modernity driven by capitalist development./div

Veteran sinologist David Pollard has selected and translated the best and most representative examples of Chinese prose writing from the third century to the contemporary period. Though spanning the past 1,800 years, the bulk of the selections are from the twentieth century and range from early masters, such as Lu Xun, to the major writers of the middle generation, such as Ye Chengtao and Liang Yuchun.