Spectacularly successful debut novel, a page-turner, clear and forceful, intricate and gripping, sensitive and utterly convincing, dry, delicious humor.
Author.
Yue Tao is a novelist, essayist, business storyteller, and intercultural trainer. Born and raised in Shanghai, she has lived in Amsterdam since 2000. Her articles and stories appear in English and Chinese newspapers, magazines, and multimedia. Shanghai Blue is her debut novel.
Works.
Shanghai Blue will appear this November in London with World Editions. The Chinese original Hong Xishuai (Red Cricket) came out in 2012 with Flower City Publishing House and the Dutch translation Schemering boven Shanghai in January 2015 with Uitgeverij De Geus. Yue Tao is completing a sequel set in the Netherlands.
Review.
With the intricate suspense and tension of a thriller plus the unpredictability and uninhibited disclosure of a modern love story, this is a novel to enjoy. - Yen-Ming Chiu, author of Holland Pastoral Idyll, Following Van Gogh’s Footprints, and other books
Reviews.
Xinran, writer.
In Yue Tao’s mordant, witty, suspenseful novel, I see the struggle for existence, hear desperate cries, and feel the anguish of painful memories. - Xinran, author of The Good Women of China and China Witness among other books, columnist for The Guardian, and adviser to the BBC and Sky on China and the West
Danys, literary critic.
Like Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, Yue Tao’s novel is fast-moving, well written, and easy to read—with an unthinkable ending. Both pose the question: How to cope with people among us guilty of crimes and sins committed in a previous generation? - Danys, Chinese literary critic
Lulu Wang, writer.
With her Europeanized sense of humor, Yue Tao describes the China that flows through her veins with amazing effect. Bravo! - Lulu Wang, author of The Lily Theater and other novels
Peter Potman, diplomat.
Yue Tao weaves a fascinating tapestry whose threads are modern metropolitan China and the dark unconquered past of the Cultural Revolution everyone wants to forget while it keeps creeping back. - Peter Potman, past Consul-General for the Netherlands in Shanghai
A brilliant debut on the ties that bind in fast-changing Shanghai.
Author
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I have found a balance between my home and host countries—visiting China is a stimulus; living in Holland allows reflection, concentration, application. I need both.
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Writing lets me understand myself and my culture better. Wherever I go, I am thoroughly Chinese; the farther I go and the longer I stay away, the more Chinese I feel.
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It was only when I went abroad that I realized writing also entails disengagement, observation, empathy, and reflection—writing needs distance.
Blog.
On Shanghai TV Tonight Show
The Tonight Show (Shanghai TV's, not NBC Jimmy Fallon's) interviews a writer or artist every evening, 365 evenings a year - no break. I'm honoured to be on the show to talk about my novel and cultural differences in literature.
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Book Event in London
So excited that I will visit London again and talk about my book in an informal gathering with Chinese tea at Tea & Tattle, Arthur Probsthain Bookshop (great location opposite the British Museum in Bloomsbury).Thanks the bookshop owner Michael Sheringham and the Meridian Society for inviting
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