Shanghai - Softcover

New, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9627160733 ISBN 13: 9789627160731

Publisher: Soho Press, 2002

Synopsis

Set against the tumultuous background of China in the early twentieth century, an epic novel traces the fortunes of John Denton, a poor Englishman who arrives in Shanghai in 1903 and carves out a career as a powerful trader. Reprint.

About this title

From the Publisher:

An epic New York Times bestseller chronicling the rise of a Taipan.

John Denton lands in famed Shanghai in 1903, a young customs officer newly assigned. A "griffin," green and inexperienced, he struggles to adapt to the roiling city. Tailors live and sleep on the floor of their employers' shops, and onlookers dip money in the blood of freshly beheaded pirates to make the bills lucky. The life teeming in the city's narrow streets and grand boulevards is beyond exotic. Shanghai's fascinations are of another world. Denton, the expatriate, thrives in China and remains, acquiring wealth and power, children, a mistress. Shanghai claims him, body and soul.

This epic novel spans the most volatile decades of China's existence and reveals to us its amazingly cosmopolitan heart. Shanghai was an international bestseller and is available again for the first time in a decade.

Christopher New for many years chaired the Department of Philosophy at Hong Kong University. He was born in England, educated at Oxford, and spent nearly thirty years in China.

From the Author:

I had not thought of writing a book about Shanghai until my publisher suggested it. Shanghai? I had never been there, although I was living in nearby Hong Kong. But the more I thought about it, the more I found out, the more fascinated I became. It was for several decades the most vibrant, dangerous and dramatic city in Asia and I wanted to chronicle that through the eyes of an expatriate who made it his own. Years later, I am told, the communist mayor of Shanghai read the novel while he was visiting New York and ordered a translation to be made (with some of the politically sensitive bits omitted). I discovered this when I came across the Chinese version in Hong Kong. A Shanghai friend said the Chinese version was a best-seller. That will have to compensate me for the lack of any royalties. Shanghai became the first novel in my China Coast Trilogy (the others are The Chinese Box and A Change of Flag).

About this edition

• Publisher: Soho Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 9627160733
• ISBN 13: 9789627160731
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 764