Shanghai Grand
Forbidden Love and International Intrigue on the Eve of the Second World War
-
-
5.0 • 4 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
From award-winning and bestselling author Taras Grescoe comes a highly compelling new book about the twilight of Shanghai before the Second World War
Finalist for the 2016 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction
Longlisted for the 2017 British Columbia's National Award for Non-Fiction
On the eve of the Second World War, the foreign-controlled port of Shanghai was the rendezvous for the 20th century’s most outlandish adventurers, all under the watchful eye of the fabulously wealthy Sir Victor Sassoon. Emily Hahn was a legendary New Yorker writer who would cover China for nearly fifty years, and play an integral part in opening Asia up to the West. But at the height of the Depression, “Mickey” Hahn had just arrived in Shanghai nursing a broken heart after a disappointing affair with an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter, convinced she would never love again. After entering Sassoon’s glamorous Cathay Hotel, Hahn is absorbed into the social swirl of the expats drawn to pre-war China, among them Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Harold Acton and the colourful gangster named Morris “Two-Gun” Cohen, who had once lived in Saskatoon and Edmonton and later retired to Montreal. When she meets Zau Sinmay, a Chinese poet from an illustrious family, she discovers the real Shanghai through his eyes: the city of rich colonials, triple agents, opium-smokers, displaced Chinese peasants and increasingly desperate White Russian and Jewish refugees - a place her innate curiosity will lead her to discover first-hand. But danger lurks on the horizon and Mickey barely makes it out alive as the brutal Japanese occupation destroys the seductive world of pre-war Shanghai and Mao Tse-tung’s Communists come to power in China.
Taras Grescoe, with his trademark style and verve, brings this rich history to life in all its beautiful and intimate detail.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Grescoe's narrative is a keenly observant, sometimes soulful portrait of Emily "Mickey" Hahn, an American writer who lived in Shanghai from 1935 to 1943, and of China's political and social realities during that tumultuous period in its history: war with Japan, encroaching communism, and widespread squalor and opium addiction. Grescoe also portrays the unique culture and personalities of Shanghai. Mickey, a Missouri-born free spirit, arrived in China in 1935 during a stopover en route to Africa, and stayed for eight years. Her 52 books and numerous New Yorker vignettes made her famous; her pet gibbon, penchant for cigars, and affair with a married man made her infamous. She was linked with Sir Victor Sassoon, the wealthy owner of Shanghai's Cathay Hotel; the "decadent" poet Zau Sinmay, who initiated her voracious opium addiction; and Charles Boxer, who became her husband after a scandalous affair. Grescoe (Straphanger) incorporates a plethora of detail about events, including the Battle of Shanghai, Black Saturday, and WWII, and famous figures such as Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This is a wonderful book, but the voluminous detail might make it slow going for some readers.
