Description
By turns touching, hilarious and nightmarish, When We Were Orphans is an ingenious, genre-defying novel from the author of The Remains of the Day. Set in Shanghai and dovetailing colonial guilt and the tumultuous heartbeats of the Second World War into an intimate story of personal trauma and ambition, this spellbinding book starts off as a detective story and ends up as something else entirely.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
England, the 1930s.
Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy.
Moving between inter-war London and Shanghai, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return.
Number of pages: 320
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 19 mm