Shanghai

by Joseph Kanon

First published 2024

Amazon

4.2(2,896)

After Kristallnacht in 1938, Daniel Lohr escapes Nazi Germany and reaches Shanghai, one of the few places that will admit Jewish refugees without an entry visa. He arrives stateless and nearly penniless in the International Settlement, where his uncle has survived by navigating the city’s nightlife, criminal economy and overlapping foreign interests. Daniel’s new refuge is safer than Europe but far from secure.

Shanghai is already being reshaped by the Second Sino-Japanese War, with Chinese, Japanese and foreign jurisdictions existing uneasily beside one another. As Daniel is drawn into his uncle’s deals and a dangerous love affair, murder turns survival into a test of political and personal loyalty. Kanon uses the refugee community and the treaty-port world to show how people escaping Nazi persecution could find themselves caught inside another war and another system of competing powers.