Shanghai A Novel

Published serially between 1928 & 1931, Shanghai tells the story of a group of Japanese expatriates living in the International Settlement at the time of the May 30th Incident of 1925. The personal lives & desires of the main characters play out against a historical backdrop of labor unrest, factional intrigue, colonialist ambitions, & racial politics. The author, Yokomitsu Riichi (1898-1947), was an essayist, writer, & critical theorist who became one of the most powerful & influential literary figures in Japan during the 1920s & 1930s. He looked to contemporary avant-garde movements in Europe--Dadaism, futurism, surrealism, expressionism--for inspiration in his effort to explode the conventions of literary language & to break free of what he saw as the prison house of modern culture. Yokomitsu incorporated striking visuality into a realistic mode that presents a disturbing picture of a city in turmoil. The result is a brilliant evocation of Shanghai as a gritty ideological battleground & as an exotic landscape where dreams of sexual & economic domination are nurtured.Riichi, Yokomitsu is the author of 'Shanghai A Novel' with ISBN 9781929280018 and ISBN 1929280017.