emma harcourt the shanghai wife

‘Emma’s book is lyrical and beautiful…she has written a love story as dangerous and exotic as the worlds she describes.’
— Caroline Overington, author of The Lucky One

About The Shanghai Wife

Leaving behind the loneliness and trauma of her past in country Australia, Annie Brand arrives to the political upheaval and glittering international society of Shanghai in the 1920s. Journeying up the Yangtze with her new husband, the ship’s captain, Annie revels in the sense of adventure but when her husband sends her back to Shanghai, her freedom is quickly curtailed.

Against her will, Annie finds herself living alone in the International Settlement, increasingly suffocated by the judgemental Club ladies and their exclusive social scene: one even more restrictive than that she came from. Sick of salacious gossip and foreign condescension, and desperate to shake off the restrictions of her position in the world, Annie is slowly drawn into the bustling life and otherness of the real Shanghai, and begins to see the world from the perspective of the local people, including the servants who work at her husband’s Club.

But this world is far more complex and dangerous than the curious Annie understands and, unknowingly, she becomes caught in a web of intrigue and conspiracy as well as a passionate forbidden love affair she could not have predicted: one with far–reaching consequences…

About Emma Harcourt

Just like her grandmother, who was the inspiration behind the story for The Shanghai Wife, Emma Harcourt left her hometown of Sydney to explore the world, settling in London for 10 years where she trained and worked as a journalist for The Financial Times Group and the BBC. Emma returned to Australia when her son was a toddler, as a single mother in need of the support of her family and the sunshine for her son. She picked up her career with News Limited and the SBS before remarrying and having her two beautiful daughters, whose arrival gave Emma the chance to break from work and try her hand at writing. Emma is currently working on her second novel.

emmaharcourt.com

About Meg Keneally

Meg Keneally started her working life as a junior public affairs officer at the Australian Consulate-General in New York, before moving to Dublin to work as a sub-editor and freelance features writer. On returning to Australia, she joined The Daily Telegraph as a general news reporter, covering everything from courts to crime to animals’ birthday parties at the zoo. She then joined Radio 2UE as a talk-back radio producer. In 1997 Meg co-founded a financial service public relations company, which she sold after having her first child. For more than 10 years Meg has worked in corporate affairs for listed financial services companies, and doubles as a part-time SCUBA diving instructor. Meg is the co-author of the popular Monsarrat series of colonial mysteries.

Archive:

Emma Harcourt in conversation with Meg Keneally

Wednesday, 12 September 2018, 12:30pm – 1:30pm

Venue: Tom Keneally Centre

Join Emma Harcourt, author of The Shanghai Wife, in conversation with Meg Keneally.

Forbidden friendship, political conspiracy and incendiary passion draw Australian woman Annie Brand deep into the glamour and turmoil of 1920s Shanghai. But this world is far more complex and dangerous than the curious Annie understands and, unknowingly, she becomes caught in a web of intrigue and conspiracy as well as a passionate forbidden love affair she could not have predicted: one with far–reaching consequences…’

SMSA (Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts)

About The Shanghai Wife

About Emma Harcourt

emmaharcourt.com

About Meg Keneally

Emma Harcourt in conversation with Meg Keneally

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