An Epic Tale of Shanghai
In this week’s issue of Maclean’s, I profile David Rotenberg, author of several Shanghai-based mystery novels who now takes a more panoramic, James Clavell-esque view of the city in his recent novel – appropriately named SHANGHAI:
With the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing just wrapping up, China has
been on the minds of many, from sports fans to those with a larger
interest in the changing face of global politics and economics. But
China has been on the mind of David Rotenberg since 1994, when he
accepted a 13-week engagement to put on a production of George Ryga’s
The Ecstasy of Rita Joe with the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Rotenberg,
artistic director of the Toronto-based Professional Actors Lab, which
offers classes in acting, hasn’t been back to the city since — but the
trip paid off handsomely from a creative standpoint, spurring him to
write five critically acclaimed mystery novels featuring homicide
detective Zhong Fong.
Just before the most recent entry, The
Golden Mountain Murders, was published in 2005, Rotenberg received a
lunch invitation from Penguin Canada publisher David Davidar. As
Rotenberg recounted in a recent telephone interview, he thought they’d
be discussing a sixth Zhong Fong novel, but the talk veered to
something altogether different: “They wanted me to do for Shanghai what
James Clavell had done for Hong Kong.” Three-and-a-half years and 1,100
manuscript pages later, just in time for the Beijing Games (“A
wonderful bonus,” said Davidar), the end result is Shanghai, an epic
novel spanning thousands of years with the kind of larger-than-life
characters and page-turning qualities that turned Clavell’s Tai-Pan
(1966) and Shogun (1975), as well as the doorstoppers of James
Michener, into perennial bestsellers.