Interviews Weina Dai Randel burst onto the literary scene a number of years ago with her duology about Empress Wu Zetian, China’s first woman leader. After winning the prestigious Rita Award in 2017 and seeing her novels translated into seven languages, she is back now with a new historical novel set in 1940s Shanghai. Keeping with her love of strong women characters, her new book, The Last Rose of Shanghai, centers on a nightclub owner named Aiyi Shao who falls for a Jewish refugee who had recently escaped Nazi Germany. Through their love of jazz, they develop a forbidden bond set during one of Shanghai’s most volatile and exciting eras. Randel is the first Chinese American author to write about Shanghai Jewish refugees, although there have been dozens of memoirs, narratives, and novels about this phenomenon from Jewish authors. We recently spoke over Zoom about what made Shanghai so special and why it matters now, along with the reasons Jews escaped to Shanghai during World War II and how Chinese and Jewish traditions are so similar. Susan Blumberg-Kason: It seems that the popularity of 1930s and ’40s Shanghai rose both in China and the US about twenty-five years ago. Can you talk about the appeal of this time and why it’s so special, both to people in the US and China? Weina Dai Randel: I think many aspects of Old Shanghai appeal to us today. From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, the period of Old Shanghai was a symbol of... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2022-01-20 14:33:49 UTC ]
J.K. Rowling will write the screenplay for a film adaptation of the Potter book 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' and the movie will center on the adventures of textbook author Newt Scamander. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2013-09-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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J.K. Rowling will write the screenplay for a film adaptation of the Potter book 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' and the movie will center on the adventures of textbook author Newt Scamander. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
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Mad Men actress cast in film adaptation of the controversial best selling book Flowers in the Attic. Continue reading at BBC News
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The Walt Disney Studios is developing a film adaptation of the first two novels in Eoin Colfer... Continue reading at The Bookseller
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The film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir 'Wild' will be brought to the big screen by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
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Tom Hanks is expected to reprise his role as Robert Langdon in the film adaptation of Dan Brown... Continue reading at The Bookseller
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Orbit has acquired a fantasy retelling of the events of the Second World War by American author... Continue reading at The Bookseller
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Why is Google making a magazine? Think Quarterly really came to be out of the insight that, at Google, we use research and analysis from inside Google and outside to inform our own decision-making and products. And we realized that a lot of our partners wanted access to the same kinds of... Continue reading at AdWeek
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