"Fisher is under house arrest and required to write his testimony as the result of the mysterious death of his friend Chen Tai-pan. The peculiarity of this style – punctuated by Fisher's frequent requests, between chapters, for bottles of Beijing Beer – becomes lass jarring as he slides into the story of his snowballing adventures in capitalism in a communist country. Characters richly populate Fisher's life. His observations are philosophical and heartfelt. The tale is a lively, upbeat and humorous look at Beijing life through the eyes of an unabashed Westerner."

Ruth Mathewson
South China Morning Post

Robert Abel has written two previous novels, Freedom Dues, a comic historical novel, The Progress of a Fire, about the Vietnam generation. He has also written three collections of stories: Ghost Traps (which won the 1989 Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award), Full-Tilt Boogie and Skin and Bones.

He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Writing Program and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1978. He was born and raised in the Midwest, where he spent several years as a college instructor, editor and journalist. He now lives and writes full-time in North Central Massachusetts.

Robert Abel worked in Beijing as a foreign expert in 1987, and taught literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1994. On his return to Beijing in 1997 (teaching English again) he says he found Riding a Tiger seeming more prophetic than fantastic.

Visit Robert Abel's home page to learn more about his writing and artistic interests.

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