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 ]
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Congrats to Susan Choi for ending the year on a high note: her novel Trust Exercise, which won this year’s National Book Award for Fiction, is in development to become a limited television series with FilmNation Entertainment. Choi will write the series for FilmNation Entertainment, which was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-12-12 21:43:30 UTC ]
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The former Obama official recounts warring parents, policy wins and Washington gossip in her memoir. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2019-12-06 22:13:50 UTC ]
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On December 5, New York's trade publishing community packed the TimesCenter in Manhattan to hear a who's who of authors remember the highly regarded Random House publisher Susan Kamil, who died suddenly on September 8 at 69. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-12-06 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Organizers of the 2019 China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair say that 1,498 rights trade agreements were made during the fair. The post China’s Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair Reports 16,145 Trade Visitors appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2019-12-03 08:30:46 UTC ]
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“UNLIKE MOST JEWISH BOYS from New Jersey, I have a Jamaican accent,” writes Ross Kenneth Urken in Another Mother, his memoir in which he goes in search of both his recollections of the Jamaican nanny who raised him and all of the things he never knew about her before she died. He writes,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-24 20:00:33 UTC ]
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PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH for the first time by Verso Books, Will and Testament is the latest novel from Vigdis Hjorth, one of Norway’s leading writers. Told from the perspective of Bergljot, a theater critic estranged from her parents and siblings, the narrative is centered around the inheritance of... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-21 20:00:35 UTC ]
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Sarah M. Broom won the nonfiction prize for “The Yellow House,” one of several memoirs in the category. Arthur Sze won in poetry for “Sight Lines.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-11-21 03:34:36 UTC ]
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In our latest edition of featured nonfiction, we present an excerpt from National Book Award finalist Susan Straight’s new novel, In the Country of Women, out now from Catapult. The post ‘In the Country of Women’: Featured Nonfiction from Susan Straight appeared first on The Millions. Continue reading at The Millions
[ The Millions | 2019-11-19 20:00:11 UTC ]
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The China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair is expected to nearly treble in size by 2022 and expand to a five-day event, organisers say. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-18 11:13:09 UTC ]
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Science and STEM fiction ruled at the China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair with the country's presses also interested in illustrated non-fiction, UK publishers say. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-11-17 17:44:37 UTC ]
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ANN PATCHETT IS an American writer and independent bookseller who has authored eight novels, three books of nonfiction, co-authored a children’s book, and edited two books of essays. Her latest novel is The Dutch House, which was released this September. Patchett has received numerous awards and... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-11-12 20:00:45 UTC ]
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The content analytics company Parse.ly has long captivated publishers with its intuitive dashboard to track how articles perform. In October, the 10-year-old company added functionality that tracks conversions. Parse.ly clients can now analyze the type of content people read before they... Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2019-11-11 21:36:26 UTC ]
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Los Angeles Times Book Club welcomes Michael Connelly, Ronan Farrow and Julie Andrews Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-10-19 15:13:50 UTC ]
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Elton John will be appearing in conversation with David Walliams at an exclusive event in celebration of the singer songwriter’s newly released autobiography, Pan Macmillan has announced. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-15 02:22:32 UTC ]
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With a high-profile launch title in the form of climate change polemic The Future We Choose, Zaffre Books’ new, concise list Manilla is seeking to publish books that set the agenda. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-10-11 12:15:50 UTC ]
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The Miami Book Fair’s director of operations, Delia Lopez, and director of programs, Lissette Mendez, have been working together for 15 years. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-10-11 04:00:00 UTC ]
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LESLIE JAMISON IS NO STRANGER to tough questions. In fact, she’s undyingly attracted to them. Her three previous works — the novel The Gin Closet (2010), the essay collection The Empathy Exams (2014), and the memoir The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (2018) — all deal explicitly with... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2019-10-03 12:30:39 UTC ]
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The book world can be a small one. We're playing a game of six degrees of separation, starting with Gabriel García Márquez, ending with Susan Sontag. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2019-09-26 10:41:27 UTC ]
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Interviews Renee H. Shea Monique Truong / Photo © Haruka Sakaguchi Monique Truong, who came to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, began exploring untold and ignored histories in her first novel, The Book of Salt (2003), told through... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-09-17 13:54:26 UTC ]
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Salman Rushdie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lena Dunham, Elizabeth Strout, Gary Shteyngart and Prince were among the authors she nurtured. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-09-10 22:55:59 UTC ]
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