A review of ‘The Shanghai Circle’ by a member of the Online Book Club on the 3rd January 2024
5 out of 5 stars
“Shanghai Circle” by Tony Henderson is a historical fiction book about events that happened to two families living in Shanghai.
The main characters in this novel are fictitious but the historical events involved in this story are actual events occurred in Shanghai between the years 1936 and 1937. The book describes the stories of two people who are getting ready to take over businesses of their families. While the girl is preparing to take a big role in her father’s business as a “taipan”, the guy is preparing to take over his father’s role in Sung Society, learning the life of being in a triad.
In this story, there are two main characters named Davina the daughter of the boss of a large British company named Guest located in Shanghai, and Joseph the son of the head of triad of Sung Society. During the time Joseph’s grandfather was the leader of the Sung Society, there had been a trap set by a guest taipan resulting in the death of both Joseph’s grandfather and his uncle. Due to this, Joseph’s father made a plan to take revenge on the Guest Company by killing the wife of the boss of this company.
This story involves the important occurrences that happened in those years such as the big typhoon that happened in Hong Kong and the Bloody Saturday in Shanghai that took place during the Battle of Shanghai. During this typhoon, Devina loses her father while moving to Hong Kong. Also the event of Bloody Saturday is described as there are dead Chinese soldiers and some civilians lying in the streets of Shanghai.
Overall, this book is captivating and educational in a lot of ways. It shows how some unthoughtful actions can result in unpleasant situations. Historical events happened and relations between Chinese and Japanese are described in this story which are educational in a lot of ways.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed reading this book. This book is well edited and does not have any grammar errors.I rate the book 5 out of 5.