City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir

A talk on the Jews of Shanghai in the 1930s.

Paul French, author, and Dr Zvia Bowman, an expert on East Asia and Chinese Language and Literature, will take you to Shanghai of 1930s when that city could give Chicago a run for its money! 1930s Shanghai was also a city with more than its fair share of Jewish characters - Russian emigres, entrepreneurs, refugees from fascism, property millionaires, opium dealers, entertainers and a few gangsters too…

Born and currently based in London, Paul French lived and worked in Shanghai for many years. After a career as a widely published analyst and commentator on China he is now a full time author, scriptwriter and historian focusing on China and Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. His true crime book Midnight in Peking was a New York Times Bestseller, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, a Mystery Writers’ of America Edgar award winner for Best Fact Crime and a Crime Writers’ Association (UK) Dagger award for non-fiction.

Dr Zvia Bowman was born in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Her family was the last Jewish family to leave China. She obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto in Canada and taught Chinese language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1983 to 1989. Since 1993 she has been teaching these subjects at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She has published several articles on the history of the Jews in Harbin and on Chinese literature, and is completing a book on the history of the Harbin Jewish community.