Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso,Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China.

Posted: October 5th, 2023 | No Comments »

Now available – Scott Seligman’s Murder in Manchuria….

When concert pianists Semyon Kaspé and Lydia Shapiro parted on a street in the city of Harbin near midnight on August 24, 1933, neither could anticipate the dark sequence of events the coming months would hold in store. The kidnapping of Semyon that night would set the Manchurian Jewish community on edge, arouse worldwide opprobrium and leave behind an unsolved mystery. And it would pull in an improbable cast of Jewish merchants, Japanese military men, White Russian thugs, French diplomats, Chinese judges, an Italian spy-for-hire and even Pu Yi, the deposed former boy emperor of China. It turned out to be a watershed event in the history of the so-called Empire of Manchukuo, a piece of northeast China forcibly carved off by the Japanese Army in 1931 and declared independent.

Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the book is an effort to merge my interests in Chinese and Jewish history. The tragic tale of Semyon Kaspé heralded the exodus of thousands of Russian Jews who had called this northeastern Chinese city home for decades, despite a grand Japanese plan to keep them there and use them for their later conquest of Asia. It helped unmask Manchukuo as the Japanese puppet state it was. And the book posits a solution to the mystery of exactly who ordered the abduction, a question that has puzzled historians for decades.

The publisher is offering a discount of 40% off the list price to those who order directly. To do that click here and use the code 6AS23.

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