Set in Shanghai in 1931, a mesmerizing era of revolution, love, money, and adventure, this Chinese novel - marking Xiao Bai's English-language debut - is a heart-stopping literary noir and novel of espionage and international intrigue.
A boat arrives in Shanghai harbor to the raucous sound of firecrackers. An important official in the Nationalist Party has returned from Hong Kong, accompanied by his striking wife, Leng. When the couple disembarks, an assassin suddenly appears, shoots three bullets into the official, and then kills himself. Leng disappears in the ensuing chaos.
Hseuh, a Franco-Chinese photographer, was aboard the same boat, and he was so captivated by Leng's beauty and unconcealed misery that he later recognizes her in newspaper photos accompanying details of the crime. But Hsueh has his own problems: he suspects that his White Russian lover, Therese, is cheating on him-why else would she disappear so often on their recent vacation? When he's arrested for mysterious reasons in the French Concession and forced to become a police collaborator and spy, he realizes that in the seamy, devious world of Shanghai, no one is who they appear. Therese is secretly an arms dealer, supplying Shanghai's gangs with the latest state-of-the-art weapons. And his investigation of Therese eventually leads him back to Leng, a loyal Communist revolutionary with ties to a menacing new gang, one led by a charismatic Communist whose acts of violence and terrorism could have a devastating impact on the entire country.
Hseuh has more aptitude for espionage than he ever suspected, and he quickly becomes submerged in a murky brew of mobsters, smugglers, anarchists, and assassins. He finds himself torn between Therese and Leng, and committed to protecting both women even as he leads the police closer to discovering the violent mission of the gang. As the web of intrigue snares tighter around him, Hsueh plays both sides, spinning his own lies in a feverish struggle to stay alive. A richly atmospheric, fast-paced thriller teeming with femme fatales, criminals, and double-agents, FRENCH CONCESSION reveals an electrifying, decadent world of love, violence, and betrayal.
About the Author
Xiao Bai was born in 1968 in Shanghai. He is the author of Horny Hamlet, a prize-winning collection of essays, and the novel Game Point. In 2013 his novella, Xu Xiangbi the Spy, won the tenth annual Shanghai Literary Prize. French Concession is his first novel to be translated into English. He lives in Shanghai.
Industry Reviews
"Rich with historical detail, Xiao Bai's French Concession is a sensual, intellectual thriller--which like human memory, is pulled from the chaos of truth and lies, desire and regret." -- Simon Van Booy "Xiao Bai has done something totally different. He didn't write about the 1930's and the concessions as background for his story-they are the subjects of his writing. He is writing in the tradition of Honore de Balzac." -- Feng Tao, book editor and critic in Shanghai "A complex and fast-paced plot that twists around the murder, in the spring of 1931, of a Nanking politico on his arrival in Shanghai...A political and police novel, historical fresco, and mirror of human passions." -- Il Manifesto (Italy)
