Taras Grescoe’s Shanghai Grand brings back to life Shanghai’s International Settlement of the 1930s through the intertwining stories of three extraordinary people: Sir Victor Sassoon, the Sephardic Jewish multimillionaire who built a real-estate empire on the Huangpu mud, the globetrotting flapper Emily “Mickey” Hahn and her lover, Zau Sinmay, a decadent poet who introduced her to the city, opium and all the pleasures of the Orient. Grescoe will share the behind-the-scenes story of what it took to bring these remarkable characters back to life and how he tracked down their homes, haunts and surviving descendants in today’s megacity.
