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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
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THE LAST KINGS OF SHANGHAI
The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China
An epic, multigenerational story of two rival dynasties who flourished in Shanghai and Hong Kong as twentieth-century China surged into the modern era, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
Shanghai, 1936. The Cathay Hotel is one of the most glamorous in the world. Built by Victor Sassoonbillionaire playboy and scion of the Sassoon dynastythe hotel hosts a who's who of global celebrities. A few miles away, Mao Zedong and the nascent communist party have been plotting revolution before being forced to flee the city.
By the 1930's, the Sassoon had been doing business in China for a century, rivaled in wealth by only the Kadoories. These two Jewish families, both originally from Baghdad, stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; and nearly losing everything as the Communists swept into power.
Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable story of how these families ignited an economic boom and opened China to the world, but remained blind to the country's political turmoil on their doorsteps. Kaufman enters the lives of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue and survival. He also tells the triumphant story of how they joined to rescue and protect 18,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism.
The book lays bare the moral compromises of the Kadoories and the Sassoons--and their exceptional foresight, success and generosity. China started out as a business opportunity, but became a home that they were reluctant to leave; the lavish buildings they built and booming businesses they nurtured continue to define Shanghai and Hong Kong to this day.
Jonathan Kaufman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has written and reported on China for thirty years for The Boston Globe, where he covered the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square; The Wall Street Journal, where he served as China bureau chief from 2002 to 2005; and Bloomberg News. He is the author of A Hole in the Heart of the World: Being Jewish in Eastern Europe and Broken Alliance: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America, winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is Director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University in Boston.
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Book
Published 2020-06-01 by Viking |