Portland author Nicole Mones on her novel NIGHT IN SHANGHAI

Host Lisa Loving speaks with Portland author Nicole Mones about her latest novel, NIGHT IN SHANGHAI, which illuminates the pivotal role of African-American musicians in the Chinese jazz age.  Recruited from the depths of the Depression, whisked to the epicenter of Asia’s hottest nightlife, these jazz players found wealth, freedom, and fame beyond their dreams, only to be caught up in the outbreak of World War II. The novel’s Thomas Greene , a classically trained Baltimore piano player, is tapped to lead a Shanghai swing orchestra. Soon success is his, prestige, illicit love with the brilliant and unavailable Song Yuhua… it’s paradise, and he never wants to leave. But war and revolution pull his world apart, until it’s a struggle to survive.
 
NICOLE MONES is the prize-winning author of three previous novels, The Last Chinese Chef, Lost in Translation, and A Cup of Light, which have been published in more than twenty-five countries. Her nonfiction writing on China has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Gourmet, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. She is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.