The dramatic real life stories of four young people caught up in
the mass exodus of Shanghai in the wake of China's 1949 Communist
revolution-a heartrending precursor to the struggles
faced by emigrants today.
"A true page-turner . . . Helen Zia has proven once
again that history is something that happens to real people."-New
York Times bestselling author Lisa See
Helen Zia is the author of Asian American Dreams- The Emergence of an American People, a finalist for the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize (Bill Clinton referred to the book in two separate Rose Garden speeches). Zia is the co-author, with Wen Ho Lee, of My Country Versus Me- The First-Hand Account by the Los Alamos Scientist Who Was Falsely Accused of Being a Spy. She is also a former executive editor of Ms. magazine. A Fulbright Scholar, Zia first visited China in 1972, just after President Nixon's historic trip. A graduate of Princeton University, she holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from the City University of New York School of Law and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Blending the personal with pivotal world history, Zia
succeeds in creating a universal, timeless story. . .
. Gathered, analyzed, and distilled with insight and
meticulous documentation, Zia’s book gives voice to a history
almost lost.”—The Christian Science Monitor
“A deftly woven, deeply moving chronicle of the
extraordinary ordeals of four ordinary Chinese in a world torn by
war and fractured by ideology . . . a fascinating read as an
intimate family memoir, as well as a missing chapter of modern
history finally coming to light . . . What makes the
Shanghai story unique . . . is that we didn’t really know the
story. Except in some films and novels that make passing references
to this episode of Chinese history—often as a nostalgic backdrop,
equivalent to a crowd scene in cinematic terms—the real human cost
of the massive exodus has remained a mystery. Official records, if
any, are suppressed, and research in this area has been sketchy. In
this sense, Helen Zia’s new book, Last Boat Out of
Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao’s
Revolution . . . fills a gap in our collective memory.”—San
Francisco Chronicle
“Beautifully crafted, carefully researched . . . Last
Boat Out of Shanghai is an engaging work of high-quality
popular history. It has things to offer not just to general readers
with little knowledge about the city’s intriguing past, but even to
specialists. . . . Ms. Zia lets us eavesdrop on the
conversations in ‘hushed voices’ of several people whose childhoods
are brought vividly to life. . . . Last Boat Out of
Shanghai is so good I’ll certainly need to add it to the
syllabus for my class. That means something else will have to go—or
my students will simply have four hundred more pages of
fascinating reading.”—Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, The Wall Street
Journal
“The dramatic story of four young people who were among
the thousands fleeing China after 1949’s Communist
revolution. Eye-opening.”—People
“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
“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
Ask a Question About this Product More... |