Shanghai ’37 (Shanghai Hotel), Vicki Baum and Women’s Boxing in Berlin

I blogged the other day over at the Los Angeles Review of Books China blog on some comparisons between inter-war Istanbul and Shanghai, by way of slipping in a review of Charles King’s excellent book Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul. I happened to mention in that review that Shanghai’s equivalent of the Pera Palace in the 1930s was probably Sir Victor Sassoon’s Cathay Hotel (now the rather less exciting Peace Hotel) and that that hotel had its own novel – Vicki Baum’s Shanghai ’37 (sometimes called Shanghai Hotel). I’m going to assume a hefty percentage of China Rhyming readers will know Baum’s novel, but I thought this as good a opportunity as any to slip in a picture of its rather good original cover…

What I didn’t realise until I happened to check Baum’s bio was that she was an early advocate of women’s boxing and, in the 1920s, trained with the Turkish prizefighter Sabri Mahir at his Studio for Boxing and Physical Culture in Berlin. So there actually was a Turkey/Shanghai link in Baum’s life.

Baum in a Berlin boxing gym in the 1920s

And a few other Shanghai’37 (Shanghai Hotel covers)