Literary places in Shanghai

Mapped

• 1984

  Empire of the Sun

  J. G. Ballard

  Ballard's wartime Shanghai, drawn from his own childhood: a boy is cut loose from his parents when the Japanese seize the city after Pearl Harbour. The map runs from the family villa in the western suburbs, through the International Settlement of the Bund and Nanking Road, out to the internment camp beside the Lunghua pagoda and airfield where he waits out the war.

  6 places →

• 1947

  Fortress Besieged

  Qian Zhongshu

  Qian Zhongshu's great comic novel follows Fang Hongjian, home from Europe with a bought diploma, through the pretensions of 1930s Shanghai society, a farcical journey to a shabby university in the interior, and a marriage that proves the book's famous image: a besieged fortress, which those outside want to storm and those inside want to escape. The city anchors it, its returning ships, salons and matchmaking, before the long trek inland and the disillusioned return.

  5 places →