Cafe Jause: A Story of Viennese Shanghai

Shanghai, 1936. On the eve of World War II, the Jewish, Chinese and Japanese customers of a famous Viennese caf on Zhoushan Road get together for an international project: to bake the 'king of the cakes', the legendary German baumkuchen. Fully illustrated with modern and vintage photography. This edition includes a Chinese excerpt translated by the author and performed to Chinese audiences.

Wena Poon is an American novelist and photographer. Her first novel Alex y Robert, about a Texan woman bullfighter in Spain, was adapted by the BBC and broadcast as a 10-episode Radio 4 series. Her play The Wood Orchid, about the Chinese woman warrior Hua Mulan, was professionally staged in Westminster Abbey, London by the Bush Theatre. Author of 13 books of literary fiction, Wena won the UK’s Willesden Herald Short Story Prize and was nominated for France’s Prix Hemingway and the UK’s Bridport Prize for Poetry. She was also a two-time nominee for Ireland’s Frank O’Connor Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. Born and raised in Singapore, Wena is an honors graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She is a lawyer by profession. Her website is www.wenapoon.com.