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› Find signed collectible books: '110 Shanghai Road'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Agnes Smedley: The Life and Times of an American Radical'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All About Shanghai: A Standard Guidebook'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ancestor Game'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beijing & Shanghai: China's Hottest Cities'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Binding Chair'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Binding Chair or a Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Blue House'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building Shanghai: The Story of China's Gateway'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Case of Two Cities'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'China Hands: Nine Decades Of Adventure, Espionage, And Diplomacy In Asia'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chinese Cuisine Shanghai Styles'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Chinese Opium Wars'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death of a Red Heroine'
By any standard, Inspector Chen Cao is a novelty in the world of police procedurals. A published poet and translator of American and English mystery novels, he has been assigned by the Chinese government, under Deng Xiaoping's cadre policy, to a "productive" job with the Special Cases Bureau of the Shanghai Police Department.
Shanghai in the mid-1990s is a city caught between reverence for the past and fascination with a tantalizing, market-driven present. When the body of a young "national model worker," revered for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up in a canal, Chen is thrown into the midst of these opposing forces. As he struggles to unravel the hidden threads of this paragon's life, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. With party-line-spouting superiors above him and detectives who resent his quick promotion beneath him, Chen finds himself wondering whether justice is a concept at all meaningful in late-20th-century China.
Death of a Red Heroine is a book hovering uneasily between the spheres of fiction and fact, creativity and didacticism. For much of the novel, author Qiu Xiaolong seems more intent on driving home the actions and consequences of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath than on the slowly unfolding plot. Tedious repetitions of the fates, under Mao, of "educated youths" joust with both the actions of the detectives and Chen's "poetic" ruminations, which, unfortunately, are infected by precisely the stiffness and arbitrariness Qiu is at pains to decry in his historical passages. The moving couplets Chen favors are potentially fascinating insights into the interaction between ancient and modern China, but instead of provoking the reader into reflection, Qiu offers reductive explanations of each and every poem.
The moments when Qiu concentrates on invoking atmosphere are both illuminating and rewarding: Detective Yu's wife's pride and pleasure in having brought home a dozen crabs at "state price" are movingly well crafted, all the more so because Qiu seems almost unaware of what he is doing. Rather than lecturing on the economic dilemmas of the modern worker, he lets Peiqin's simple happiness speak for itself. In the last quarter of the book, Qiu seems to find his stride, though his writing style remains undeniably awkward. Here Chen expands and relaxes, and with him, the novel. Qiu's debut, though anything but polished, holds the promise of better things to come. --Kelly Flynn [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Death of a Red Heroine'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life, 1884-1898'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Distant Land of My Father'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dragon's Eye: A Chinese Noir'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Empire of the Sun'
Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.
Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.
Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Frommer's Shanghai'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Earth'
The story begins on the wedding day of farmer Wang Lung and follows his simple, often one-sided view of the Chinese culture, times, and his connection with the land. The land is a recurring theme throughout the novel, seemingly nurtured by the apparent protagonists, rejected and ruined by the antagonists. The author uses the House of Hwang, a nearby house of nobles, to contrast and predict their rise and fall. As the House of Hwang meets its slow and desperate end, Wang Lung rises.
However, as the weather turns disastrous for farming, Wang Lung's family has to flee to the city to scrape out a meager living. Upon returning home, the family fares better. Wang Lung eventually becomes a prosperous man, his rise contrasting with the downfall of the Hwang family, who lose their connection to the land. At the end of the novel, when Wang Lung is an old man, he overhears his sons plotting to sell some of the land, thus showing the end of the cycle of wealth and downfall. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kindness of Women'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'LA Condicion Humana'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lonely Planet Shanghai'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Loyal Character Dancer'
Praise for Qiu Xiaolong:
"A sequel [to Death of a Red Heroine] that in many ways is even more impressive. . . . [Qiu] has moved from the poetic, exotic milieu of his first book (although plenty of elements remain) into a tougher, wider, probably more commercial and modern version of China as seen by America."Chicago Tribune
"Another wonderful novel featuring Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police Bureau . . . [for] Sinophiles like myself, who fantasize about taking an insiders tour of Shanghai."Maureen Corrigan, NPRs Fresh Air
"The travelogue aspects of the novel dont overwhelm its critical intelligence. As in all hard-boiled [mysteries], the murder and mayhem provide a cover story for a larger investigation of social mysteries."Chicago Sun-Times
Inspector Chens mentor in the Shanghai Police Bureau has assigned him to escort U.S. Marshal Catherine Rohn. Her mission is to bring Wen, the wife of a witness in an important criminal trial, to the United States. Inspector Rohn is already en route when Chen learns that Wen has unaccountably vanished from her village in Fujian. Or is this just what he is supposed to believe? Chen resents his role; he would rather investigate the triad killing in Shanghais beauteous Bund Park. But his boss insists that saving face with Inspector Rohn has priority. So Chen Cao, the ambitious son of a father who imbued him with Confucian precepts, must tread warily as he tries once again to be a good cop, a good man, and also a loyal Party member.
Qiu Xiaolong, a prize-winning poet and critic in China, now teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, where he lives with his wife and daughter. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Man's Fate'
Man's Fate was first published in 1933. As a fictional account of the early days of the Chinese Revolution, this novel remains a powerful expression of psychological insight into the spirit of political revolution. From the opening scene, in which Chinese terrorist Ch'en Ta Erh struggles internally over his task of assassinating a sleeping man, Malraux combines gritty action with an elaboration of the existential principle that social change is powered by the actions of individuals. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Man's Fate : (la Condition Humaine)'
Man's Fate was first published in 1933. As a fictional account of the early days of the Chinese Revolution, this novel remains a powerful expression of psychological insight into the spirit of political revolution. From the opening scene, in which Chinese terrorist Ch'en Ta Erh struggles internally over his task of assassinating a sleeping man, Malraux combines gritty action with an elaboration of the existential principle that social change is powered by the actions of individuals. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Master of Rain'
Tom Bradby's third novel (though his first to be published in the U.S.) is a feverish work of historical noir, a labyrinthine thriller set in a vicious world where everyone--as in Bogart's Casablanca--has a reason for hiding. The year is 1926; the city is Shanghai, a swamp of organized crime, corruption, turf wars between British intelligence and street-level law enforcement, Communist sympathizers, and East European refugees from Bolshevik atrocities. Into this sweltering, cutthroat port city steps Richard Field, an idealistic policeman from Yorkshire looking to distance himself from a painful past. Ill-suited to Shanghai's heat and shocking violence, Field nevertheless throws himself into investigating the grisly murder of a Russian prostitute, the latest in a line of dead women who lived in the orbit of a powerful Chinese mobster. Slowed by official roadblocks, Field learns that the only man in his department he can trust is a tough Chicago detective, Caprisi, a touchstone of sanity even as Field loses his rookie head over another doomed Russian call girl.
Bradby, a seasoned correspondent for Britain's ITN television network, has obviously spent considerable time researching 1920s Shanghai. His feel for the city's Byzantine society and exotic textures is matched by his accessible vision of Shanghai as a junction of international fallout and internal intrigue. Less compelling, if not outright distracting, is Bradby's more contemporary emphasis on ghastly serial killings with a sex-crime edge. But in the end, the book's remarkable prose and density of experience are uniquely rewarding. --Tom Keogh [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Pearl Buck's the Good Earth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Season of High Adventure: Edgar Snow in China'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai And the Edges of Empires'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures, 1918-1939'
Shanghai: Collision Point of Cultures 1918--1939. ASIN: 0517570254. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Diary: A Young Girl's Journey From Hitler's Hate To War-torn China'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Express'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Girl Gets All Dressed Up'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Journal: An Eyewitness Account of the Cultural Revolution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals, and Entertainment Culture, 1850v1910'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of the Decadent City 1842-1949'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shanghai, 1842-1949'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time Out Shanghai'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Treasures from the Shanghai Museum'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When Red Is Black'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When Red Is Black'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When We Were Orphans'
When 9-year-old Christopher Banks's father--a British businessman involved in the opium trade--disappears from the family home in Shanghai, the boy and his friend Akira play at being detectives: "Until in the end, after the chases, fist-fights and gun-battles around the warren-like alleys of the Chinese districts, whatever our variations and elaborations, our narratives would always conclude with a magnificent ceremony held in Jessfield Park, a ceremony that would see us, one after another, step out onto a specially erected stage ... to greet the vast cheering crowds."
But Christopher's mother also disappears, and he is sent to live in England, where he grows up in the years between the world wars to become, he claims, a famous detective. His family's fate continues to haunt him, however, and he sifts through his memories to try to make sense of his loss. Finally, in the late 1930s, he returns to Shanghai to solve the most important case of his life. But as Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. Is the Japanese soldier he meets really Akira? Are his parents really being held in a house in the Chinese district? And who is Mr. Grayson, the British official who seems to be planning an important celebration? "My first question, sir, before anything else, is if you're happy with the choice of Jessfield Park for the ceremony? We will, you see, require substantial space."
In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro uses the conventions of crime fiction to create a moving portrait of a troubled mind, and of a man who cannot escape the long shadows cast by childhood trauma. Sherlock Holmes needed only fragments--a muddy shoe, cigarette ash on a sleeve--to make his deductions, but all Christopher has are fading recollections of long-ago events, and for him the truth is much harder to grasp. Ishiguro writes in the first person, but from the beginning there are cracks in Christopher's carefully restrained prose, suggestions that his version of the world may not be the most reliable. Faced with such a narrator, the reader is forced to become a detective too, chasing crumbs of truth through the labyrinth of Christopher's memory.
Ishiguro has never been one for verbal pyrotechnics, but the unruffled surface of this haunting novel only adds to its emotional power. When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. --Simon Leake [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'La Condition Humaine'
Outre l'irréductible échéance liée à la mort, outre les multiples et indicibles souffrances, n'est-il pas donné à tous de choisir son destin ? Certes la vie est tragique mais elle doit avoir un sens. Un sens, peut-être des sens, mais seuls quelques-uns aux vertus salvatrices s'offrent aux hommes pour les affranchir de leur condition. La Révolution, au nom d'une foi en la fraternité, est une arme tournée contre la misère, celle qui enchaîne l'homme parce qu'elle le prive de sa dignité. Vaincre l'humiliation en leur nom propre ou pour les autres par le biais de la Révolution, voici le combat que se sont choisis les héros de La Condition humaine. Pour échapper à l'angoisse de "n'être qu'un homme", l'amour est un autre de ces moyens, mais seul l'amour véritable et fusionnel qu'éprouvent Kyo et May l'un pour l'autre est susceptible de briser la profonde solitude des êtres. Misérable humanité, humanité héroïque et grandiose, c'est "la condition humaine"... Elle résonnera à jamais comme un écho au fond de soi, tant il est vrai que ce roman est "d'une intelligence admirable et, malgré cela, profondément enfoncé dans la vie, engagé, et pantelant d'une angoisse parfois insoutenable", comme l'avait écrit Gide. --Lenaïc Gravis et Jocelyn Blériot [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quand Nous Etions Orphelins'
383pages. 17x10,8x2,4cm. Poche. Christopher Banks, Anglais né à Shanghai à l'aube du XXe siècle, est devenu orphelin à 9 ans, à la suite de la disparition énigmatique de ses parents. Envoyé en Grande-Bretagne pour y poursuivre ses études, il devient un détective célèbre, résolvant les affaires les plus difficiles, avant de décider finalement de revenir sur les lieux de son enfance pour s'attaquer à l'énigme qui n'a cessé de le hanter : pourquoi ses parents ont-ils été enlevés ? Cet événement lourd de conséquences serait-il lié au trafic d'opium ? Mais est-il possible de cerner la vérité à partir de souvenirs évanescents, qui plus est dans une ville quotidiennement défigurée par les ravages de la guerre sino-japonaise ? Et peut-on faire confiance à un homme certes rigoureux, mais forcément impliqué émotionnellement dans son enquête ? Le lecteur est alors amené à endosser lui aussi l'habit de détective, en quête des bribes de vérité que livre la conscience labyrinthique du personnage. L'auteur virtuose des Vestiges du Jour explore ainsi à nouveau le territoire du dédale de la mémoire. Avec originalité et subtilité, perspicacité et finesse d'humour, il nous livre un roman remarquable, riche en émotions et en rebondissements. Le lecteur se laisse emporter avec plaisir par le souffle de cette ?uvre à l'atmosphère désenchantée, et qui invite à profiter des plaisirs minuscules de la vie. Un très bon cru, à consommer sans modération. -Nathalie Gouiffès [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quando Eravamo Orfani'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Das Buch Ruth'
Willkommen im Reich der postmodernen Narrativität ( Narri! Narro!). Nun gut, Scherz beiseite, wer Ishiguro kennt, wird, auch wenn es sich wie hier um eine Kriminalgeschichte handelt, ohnehin keinen Schlaf raubenden Reißer erwarten. Kunst darf (muss?) schließlich auch ein wenig anstrengen.
Was uns erwartet: Christopher Banks, der Protagonist des Romans, ist, nach erfolgreichem Universitätsbesuch, zum berühmtesten Londoner Detektiv der 30er Jahre geworden. Er ist ein Philosoph, ein Metaphysiker des Detektivischen. Doch was treibt ihn ins Investigative? Wir erfahren es mittels ausführlicher Rückblenden. Banks verbringt Kindheit und Jugend in Shanghai und muss erleben, dass eines Tages seine Eltern verschwunden sind. Er ist besessen davon, das Geheimnis dieses Verschwindens zu ergründen. Nach und nach wird jedoch deutlich, dass diese scheinbar präzisen Erinnerungen in den zahllosen Rückblenden nicht so sehr der Aufhellung der Vergangenheit, als der Konstruktion eines Idealbildes seiner Kindheit dienen. Wir hören, dezent, dezent, die postmoderne Nachtigall trapsen: Nicht die Geschichte als solche ist besonders wichtig, sondern die Beschreibung des postmodernen Ego im Prozess seiner Selbstfindung, seines Bemühens, Ordnung ins allgegenwärtige Chaos zu bringen.
In gewissem Sinne steht dieser Roman in einer Tradition des Kafkaesken ( nicht Kafkas!!): der Beschreibung des Unwirklichen und Unlogischen im vorgeblich Sinnhaften.
Lesbar und wider Erwarten unterhaltsam wird dieses Buch durch Ishiguros parodistisches Talent, auch wenn die manchmal unambitionierte bis fantasielose Übersetzung dem hohen literarischen Rang dieses Autors nicht immer gerecht wird. Trost und Versprechen zum Schluss: Das Mysterium des elterlichen Verschwindens wird tatsächlich enträtselt. --Dietrich Clausen [via]
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