Some call the city the Splendor of the East; others the Whore of Asia. A melting pot of different nations, fused by war and commerce, this is the Shanghai of the 1920s.
The Great Powers are greedily exploiting China for its cheap labor and reaping the cruel rewards of the booming opium trade. When a flotilla of ships carries the remnants of the defeated White Army on entry to Shanghai, the fragile balance of this international marketplace comes under threat.
Among the refugees is Klim Rogov, an émigré journalist whose life and marriage have been claimed by the Russian Revolution. All he has left are his quick wits and keen worldliness that come in quite handy in navigating the lawless jungle of Shanghai. He finds work as a reporter at a British-run newspaper, rubbing shoulders with international gangsters while defying webbed intrigues of sinister communist agents. Amidst the survival frenzy all that keeps him going is the hope that someday he'll be reunited with his beloved wife Nina.
This complete English translation of Elvira Baryakina's White Shanghai emulates the greatest traditions of the Russian classics. Baryakina's years of research in libraries and archives around the world have resulted in a rare kind of literature which blends a multinational cast of exotic characters against the backdrop of the 1920s' turbulence and fervor and sends readers on a breathless journey of passion, political games and crime.
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