Sunday Salon: A Book and a Half

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!

Three more days to enter the contest for Whiter than Snow by Sandra Dallas, thanks to the Book Report Network.
Here's the link: Book Give-Away

I managed only a book and a half last week. It's been hectic.
I reviewed the galley of The Queen of Patpong: A Poke Rafferty Thriller by Timothy Hallinan, a first-rate suspense novel set in Bangkok that will be out in August. Here's the review.

I'm half-way through The Time Of The Dragons by Alice Ekert Rotholz, translated from the German, set in Asia before and during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and the countries of Southeast Asia. I had mentioned in an earlier post that I  wanted to see a German perspective of the war in Asia. Here's what I wrote on the post of a blogger who reviewed the book:

"I'm half way through the book, printed in 1958 by Viking Press. Really interesting novel about a Norwegian consul in Shanghai in the mid-1920s and his daughters who go back and forth to China before the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Interesting also that the author warns about watching Asians in the future, especially "Japanese, Chinese, and Indians" and their future influence in the world. (This was written in 1958) . Her book goes into the Japanese part of WWII, but Germany is mentioned only briefly. She says nothing at all about the German quest for world power during the same war. Interesting omission, since this was written only 13 or so years after WWII, and by a German author who would have had fresh memories of the war in Europe."

I love old books and old historical fiction and what we can learn from them.

I became interested in the WWII period of Asian history from reading a partial autobiography, China to Me by Emily Hahn, published in 1944.  Hahn was an American journalist and a prolific writer who spent the years before and during the Japanese occupation in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chungking and experienced the war there first hand. Hers I find a fascinating journalist's view of people and events there. So much so that I am hooked on books written on this period in Chinese history.

Well, back to finishing that interesting German author's novel on WWII in Asia, for which I have a hot and cold reaction! I will have more time in August to read and review as I have decided to ease back into retirement. Missed the blogging :)

What did you do last week?

Book Review: The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher

Imagine my surprise, and delight, at the end of reading The Piano Teacher to find that the author Janice Y.K. Lee had also read one of my favorite books, a memoir/partial autobiography by the New Yorker correspondent Emily Hahn, printed in 1944, China to Me.

Hahn's book, about Shanghai during the late 1930s and then Hong Kong after the Japanese took over Shanghai, got me interested in that period of Chinese history, and I looked for other books set in that period.

One of them was Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, When We Were Orphans, about a young English boy and a Japanese boy who both lived in Shanghai and were playmates, and what happened to them later during the Sino-Japanese war.

But let's get back to The Piano Teacher, a very enjoyable historical fiction set in the early 1940s and in the 1950s in Hong Kong.

Janice Lee's story deals with an English woman, Chaire Pendleton, who becomes a piano teacher for the daugher of a wealthy Chinese couple in Hong Kong, in the 1950s. While there, she discovers the story of the love affair between an Englishman and an Eurasian woman ten years earlier, a love that was doomed when the Japanese occupied the island and Chinese and Europeans alike had to struggle for survival at all costs.

That ill fated love story affects Claire's own love affair with an Englishman, but leaves her inexplicably bound to China.

I heartily recommend the novel and all the other books I mentioned that deal with that period of time in China's history. I first discovered Emily Hahn's book by chance at a used book sale at our local library. What a find! And here's Lee's The Piano Teacher: A Novel at the same library.

China To Me by Emily Hahn

China to MeThe 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.

The Year of the Rat
Another author writing about Shanghai around 1948 when the Communists enter the city after battles with the invading Japanese, frightening off the Europeans and leaving thousands to flee or fend for themselves - this is the topic of the novel, The Year of the Rat by Lucille Bellucci, printed in December 2000.

Journey from Shanghai
Bellucci has also written a semi-autobiographical novel, Journey from Shanghai, about a girl who flees the upheaval in Shanghai with her Italian father and Chinese mother, going to Rome and then moving on to other parts of the world, including Brazil. She has written novels set in South America as well.