Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino, and Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, Historical Novel set in the late 1930s.

 

The Invisible Helix by Keigo Higashino, December 17, 2024; Minotaur Books/NetGalley

Genre: detective novel, Tokyo

The body of Ryota Uetsuji was found floating in Tokyo Bay, and a suspect is his girlfriend Sonoka, but Sonoka was away in Kyoto at the time of the death and has an alibi. 

The themes of adoption and finding one's family years later is prevalent. The themes found in Sonoka's story of adoption are also threaded into the story of a police consultant, the brilliant physicist Yukawa. Misguided and misinformed individuals also make mistaken assumptions in this compelling story of family connections. 

I enjoyed the storyline and the easy way of writing by Higashino that made this detective novel enjoyable and also suspenseful. Another excellent book by Higashino and the fifth in the Detective Galileo series.

Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, June 25, 2024; Scribner

Genre: historical fiction, thriller, China

I just started this historical novel of Shanghia before WWII in the late 1930s. Daniel Lohr has escaped Germany on a boat heading for China, where refugees from the Nazis in Europe can find safety if they find their own way there.

Daniel meets another Jewish refugee, Leah and her mother Clara, on the ship heading east. He also meets a member of the Japanese military police, Colonel Yamada, who is keeping a close watch on the ship's passengers, all heading to Shanghai's international settlement, a section not under the control of the Japanese who invaded Shanghai and parts of China in 1937. 

The history of refugees in Shanghai from all over Europe and even from Russia has been covered in historical fiction and memoirs, and nonfiction. Kanon's book is the latest and I am reading it with interest in that period in China.

Some other books I've read on Shanghai in the 1930s include:

Bernardine's Shanghai Salon: The Story of the Doyenne of Old China by Susan Blumberg-Kasoff

The Jewish salon host in 1930s Shanghai who brought together Chinese and expats around the arts as civil war erupted and World War II loomed on the horizon. (publisher)

The Far Side of the Sky by Daniel Kalla

 In November 1938 after a night of terror for Jews across Germany, Dr. Franz Adler, a surgeon in Vienna, flees to Shanghai, China with his young daughter Hannah and his brother's widow, Esther. 

The Far Side of the Sky focuses on a short but extraordinary period of Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish history when cultures converged and heroic sacrifices were part of a quest for survival. (publisher)

White Shanghai by Elvira Baryakina. The title refers to the White Russians, those fleeing the "Reds," the Russian revolution. 

Among the refugees is Klim Rogov, a journalist whose life and marriage have been destroyed by the Russian revolution - all he has left are his quick wits and a keen worldliness that will serve him well in the lawless jungle of Shanghai.  (publisher)

China to Me by Emily Hahn, a memoir.

 The American journalist/traveler Emily Hahn wrote about her own experiences living in Shanghai, Chungking, and Hong Kong from 1935 to 1943. Her book about revolution and war in China and how it affected the local people and foreigners alike is titled China to Me: A Partial Autobiography, first printed in 1944. It's fascinating reading.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro. October 30, 2001, Knopf Doubleday Publishing

My 2017 review: 

"A book I have wanted to look at again. Set in the 1930s, it's about a young English detective with a faulty memory who returns to wartime Shanghai in 1937 to find his parents who had disappeared there years ago when he was about nine years old. As he is an unreliable narrator, readers have to figure out the puzzle of his past and become detectives themselves to decide what is fact and what is fiction.  Christopher meets a Japanese soldier in Shanghai who may or may not be his playmate from years ago, before the war. How Christopher reacts or doesn't react to him and how he ignores his surroundings in Shanghai during the Japanese invasion is part of his strange, delusional persona. This book intrigued me so much, I want to try again to get the hard facts of Christopher's journey, which may not be possible, given his inaccurate memory. Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki, Japan and now a British citizen living in London, is also author of The Remains of the Day, a Booker Prize-winning novel made into the award winning film with Anthony Hopkins." I'll just add now that on reading it again the past two days, I found the narrator Christopher to be a kind of English/European version of the Ugly American, representing the tunnel vision that ignored the reality of what was going on in Shanghai before and during WWII. These are some of the books I read or featured on my blog about Shanghai pre and during WWII. I would suggest looking at some of them before reading Kanon's book, Shanghai , as Kanon seems to assume his readers of the novel will already know the history.  What books are you reading this week?  Memes:  The Sunday Post, It's Monday: What Are You Reading, Sunday Salon, and Stacking the Shelves