The House of Memory — T. Rowland Harrison

Nicholas R. Clifford has written a beguiling novel that pierces the labyrinth of modern China's sad history with breathtaking ease....This is historical fiction of a high order, and nobody who begins THE HOUSE OF MEMORY could possibly resist its spell.JAY PARINIAuthor of THE LAST STATIONIn the spring of 1989 Matthew Walker, a young American scholar, travels to Shanghai to finish research on a book about the city's turbulent past. But he is also determined to discover the fate of his American lover's uncle, Simon Larson, who vanished from Shanghai three weeks before the Nationalists crushed the Communist uprising in 1927. Simon had left behind and journal, and Matthew combes for clues to his disappearance, arranging secret meetings with reluctant participants and uncovering long-suppressed documents. What he discovers, however, are striking parallels between two worlds, decades apart, as echoes from history reverberate to brutal consequence in Tiananmen Square. And Matthew finds himself walking dangerously close to the path taken by Simon, both personally and politically. For now he, like Simon, once a detached observer, must decide whether to become an active participant in the shaping of China's destiny.