Historic Shanghai

Enthusiastic Historic Shanghai fans will recall with great fondness the very special visit to Shanghai of author and ex-Shanghailander Rena Krasno in October 2007 - what she referred to as her “farewell tour.” An active 80-something-year-old now residing in California, Rena bluffed that this would be her last visit to her childhood home. We doubt that. Regardless, her contemporaneous account of Shanghai under the Japanese during World War II, Strangers Always, is required reading for all Shanghai fans. The daughter of stateless Russian Jewish emigres, and later a UN simultaneous interpreter between Russian, English and French, Krasno is an adept rapporteuse who tells a great story and gets her facts straight. As those of a more recent generation are so fond of saying, check it out!

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