“I have long been an admirer of Helen Zia’s writing and scholarship, but Last Boat Out of Shanghai is at a whole new level. It’s a true page-turner. Zia has proven once again that history is something that happens to real people. I stayed up late reading night after night, because I wanted to know what would happen to Benny, Ho, Bing, Annuo, and their friends and families.”—Lisa See, author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
“Zia’s portraits are compassionate and heartbreaking, and they are, ultimately, the universal story of many families who leave their homeland as refugees and find less-than-welcoming circumstances on the other side. I read with a personal hunger to know the political and personal exigencies that led to those now-or-never decisions, for they mirror the story of my own mother, who also left on virtually the last boat out of Shanghai.”—Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
“A true tale of wartime savagery and difficult moral choices, rich in sweep and detail, this compelling saga is a Chinese Dr. Zhivago.”—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers
“Gripping, magisterial, ambitious, and intimate, Last Boat Out of Shanghai not only depicts a cataclysmic century as it was lived and felt by four very different people, it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole way. What a tour de force!”—Gish Jen, author of The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap
“Last Boat Out of Shanghai deftly weaves together the stories of Chinese displaced by political turmoil into a tapestry that celebrates human determination, resilience, and ingenuity.”—Stella Dong, author of Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City
“Impeccably researched and beautifully crafted . . . Zia offers a warmly human perspective on one of the most wrenching political transitions of the twentieth century.”—Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government at Harvard University and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute
“War, foreign occupation, revolution, counterrevolution, exile, and new lives: the worst and best times of a remarkable population. Helen Zia tells their stories with clarity, understanding, and empathy. . . . Unforgettable and moving.”—Gordon H. Chang, professor of history and Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities, Stanford University
