Transformed from a swampland wilderness into a dazzling, modern–day Babylon, the Shanghai that predated Mao‘s cultural revolution was a city like no other: redolent with opium and underworld crime, booming with foreign trade, blessed with untold wealth and marred by abject squalor.

Journalist Stella Dong captures all the exoticism, extremes, and excitement of this legendary city as if it were a larger–than–life character in a fantastic novel.