A review of ‘The Shanghai Circle’ by a member of the Online Book Club on the 9th of November 2023
4 out of 5 stars
The book tells the story of the “Guest Company”, a trading firm, and the “Sung Society”, a Chinese Triad; both residents of Shanghai during the years 1936 to 1937.
The book characters associated with the “Guest Company” are the head of the company, Charles Guest, his daughter Davina, the facilitator handling all the company business, and a few employees. In the “Sung Society”, the characters are the head of the Triad, his son and heir, some mayors and minor triad members, and a Russian refugee caught in the middle.
Davina, the daughter of the Guest Company’s “Taipan”, is being trained to take over as head of the company shortly, with the help of the company’s “comprador”, while training a couple of new employees who just arrived from England. In the Sung Society, Joseph, the son and heir of the head of the second largest Triad in Shanghai, needs to learn the ropes and his way around the Chinese underground to expand the reach of the Triad to Hong Kong.
The events since the unequal treaties of the Opium Wars, which opened the ports of Shanghai and others to the Western powers, along with the ceded sovereignty over Hong Kong to the British Empire, and the Chinese resentment due to this “soft invasion”, play a key role in the socio-economic and political side of China.
As the plot advances, the reader goes through a maze of intertwined stories that sometimes confront the Eastern and Western ways of thinking. At the same time, in the background, the fallout of the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in an avalanche of refugees that arrived in China, escaping the Bolsheviks. The power struggle between the current government and Mao and his communists is on the horizon, and the Japanese expansion remains a constant common threat to all the characters.
This book is well-researched, Tony Henderson, the author, understands the behavioral differences between Eastern and Western cultures, the socio-economic situation in China during the years 1936 to 1937, and all the geopolitical factors playing their distinct roles in the lives of the book’s characters without forgetting the events that soon will take place around the world.
On the negative side, the sexual scenes and violence are graphic, and there is also an instance of graphic animal cruelty; this animal cruelty, I do not think was necessary, as it does not contribute to the story’s plot. For these reasons, I rate the book 4 out of 5 stars.
I recommend this book to fans of the historical fiction genre, as the book explores China’s history and socio-political situation just before the Japanese invasion in 1937.