Glowing reviews have greeted the publication of Richard Loseby’s latest book, A Boy of China – in Search of Mao’s Lost Son, the fruits of the writer’s detective work retracing (in reverse) the route of the 13,000km Long March.
Loseby, of course, is creative group head/senior writer at Ogilvy Auckland. Boy of China is his third book – all three are set in Asia. “They are,” writes recently retired NZ Herald travel editor Jim Eagles, “among the best travel books I’ve read – and I’ve read a lot of them.”
“It sounds almost too extraordinary to be true – a Kiwi advertising executive makes a pilgrimage across the byways of China, where tourists are rarely seen, and tracks down a long-lost son of Mao Tse Tung,” writes Eagles in the Herald on Saturday’s Weekend section.
“The quest for Little Mao takes us to a forgotten part of China where we meet fascinating people … who tell us what ordinary Chinese think about Mao, the Long March, the Cultural Revolution, capitalism with Chinese characteristics and all the other great events that have reshaped their country.
“It’s a delight to read.”
Reviewer James Belfield, writing on the Stuff site, was just as impressed: “It’s … wonderful that a creative director from an Auckland advertising agency should be the one to set out to track him down,” Belfield writes.
“Fortunately, not only does Richard Loseby have a traveller’s tenacity to overcome the many obstacles that modern China throws in his way during his own long march, but also an advertising exec’s eye for interesting selling points and an entertaining turn of phrase when retelling his story.”
- Rebel Sport My BP Story (which reached No 2 of the M+AD/Colmar Brunton TV Top 10 last year) is some of Loseby’s latest work. See it here
- Buy A Boy of China (NZ$37) here
- Read the Stuff review here
- The Jim Eagles review was published at the weekend, and had yet to be posted when M+AD went to press.
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