"1930s Shanghai shines bright in this thrilling biography of a salon doyenne who hosted Hollywood stars and went on to produce trail-blazing theatre."
As exhilarating as the best character-driven historic fiction, Susan Blumberg-Kason’s Bernardine's Shanghai Salon presents the extraordinary biography of an extraordinary woman. It comes highly recommended for readers who love real-life stories of remarkable women and are fascinated by the 1930s.
After three failed marriages at the age of 33, Jewish Illinois-born Bernardine moved to Shanghai in 1929 to marry her fourth husband. After being married in a stunning red couture wedding dress, the couple set up in home in Shanghai — a city of glittering Art Deco cinemas and jazz bars. Though it soon became clear that life with husband number four wasn’t entirely to her liking, Bernardine decided to remain in the city and establish a life for herself.
To this end, Bernardine set up a salon hosting international stars and global intelligentsia, from poets and journalists, to Hollywood icons like Charlie Chaplin and Anna May Wong. This evolved into her founding the avant-garde International Arts Theater against a backdrop of civil war and the threat of WWII.
Utterly absorbing, with its unique era and context conjured in vivid style, Bernardine's Shanghai Salon is meticulously researched, and magnificently told.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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