Remembering Shanghai: A Memoir of Socialites, Scholars and Scoundrels

Synopsis

Winner of 26 book awards including the 2019 Rubery Award BOOK OF THE YEARTrue stories of glamour, drama and tragedy told through five generations of a Shanghai family, from the last days of imperial rule to the Cultural RevolutionAudiobook narrated by two-time Asian American Film Lab Best Actress Rachel Yong and authors Isabel Sun Chao and Claire Chaowww.rememberingshanghai.com “An engaging and entertaining saga.” South China Morning Post"A volume that demands to be held." Los Angeles Review of Books“Jaw-dropping, exciting, touching, tragic and insightful.” Historic ShanghaiA high position bestowed by China’s empress dowager grants power and wealth to the Sun family. For Isabel, growing up in glamorous 1930s and ’40s Shanghai, it is a life of utmost privilege. But while her scholar father and fashionable mother shelter her from civil war and Japanese occupation, they cannot shield the family forever.When Mao comes to power, eighteen-year-old Isabel journeys to Hong Kong, not realizing that she will make it her home—and that she will never see her father again. Meanwhile, the family she has left behind struggles to survive, only to have their world shattered by the Cultural Revolution. Isabel returns to Shanghai fifty years later with her daughter, Claire, to confront their family’s past—one they discover is filled with love and betrayal, kidnappers and concubines, glittering pleasure palaces and underworld crime bosses. Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Remembering Shanghai follows five generations from vibrant Shanghai to the bright lights of Hong Kong. By turns harrowing and heartwarming, this vivid memoir explores identity and loss against the epic backdrop of a country in turmoil.