Modris Eksteins, author of the prize-winning Rites of Spring and Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Heart of Our Century, and Professor of History, University of Toronto.
"All Things Bright and Beautiful” the children sing as they bury their dead pets in a mass grave off the Bubbling Well Road. They are preparing for their own internment by the Japanese. Like that hymn and that moment, this bittersweet and beautifully crafted memoir of a childhood in old Shanghai during the Second World War stays with you long after you have turned the last page.