Synopsis
Li Jing, a high-flying financier, has just joined his father for dinner
at the grand Swan Hotel in central Shanghai when, without warning, the
ground begins to rumble. It shifts like a pre-historic animal, then
explodes in a roar of hot, unfurling air. As Li Jing drags his
unconscious father out of the collapsing building, a single shard of
glass whistles through the air and neatly pierces his forehead.
In
an instant, Li Jing's ability to speak Chinese is obliterated. After
weeks in hospital, all that emerge from his mouth are unsteady phrases
of the English he spoke as a child growing up in Virginia. His wife,
Zhou Meiling, whom he courted with beautiful words, finds herself on the
other side of an abyss, unable to communicate with her husband and
struggling to put on a brave face - for the sake of Li Jing's
floundering company, and for their son, Pang Pang.
A neurologist
who specialises in Li Jing's condition - bilingual aphasia - arrives
from the US to work with Li Jing, to coax language back onto his tongue.
Rosalyn Neal is red-haired, open-hearted, recently divorced, and as
lost as Li Jing in this bewitching, bewildering city. As doctor and
patient sit together, sharing their loneliness along with their
faltering words, feelings neither of them anticipated begin to take
hold. Feelings Meiling does not need a translator to understand.
A
sensitive exploration of the power of words and of silence, The Lost
and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai is a wonderfully evocative
debut about love and language, duty and passion, in a vibrant modern
city.
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About the Author
Ruiyan Xu was born in Shanghai and moved to the USA at the age of ten. She graduated from Brown University and lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai is her first novel.
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