Last Days in Shanghai

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Luke Slade, a young Congressional aide, begins this business trip to China like all other international travel he’s endured with “Lyin’ Leo”: buried under a slew of diplomatic runarounds, non-functioning cell phones, and humiliation from the Congressman at every turn. But on day two, a new challenge rears its ugly head: Leo goes on a drunken bender and disappears into the night. Unsure what dubious business his corrupt and buffoonish boss had planned, Luke must piece together the Congressman’s lies while maintaining appearances with their Chinese contacts. Amidst the confusion, a little bleary from jet-lag and alcohol, Luke receives a briefcase full of money from the mayor of a rural Chinese province. Luke accepts the “gift” in his daze, but when he later realizes his mistake and tries to return the cash, he discovers even more anxiety-inducing news. The mayor is dead. As Luke tries to unravel the complex minefield of corruption he’s tumbled into, he must also confront his own role in the events. Unwitting marionette? Fall guy? Or perhaps someone more capable of moral compromise than he would have liked to believe. Last Days in Shanghai is an unforgettable debut by a writer to watch. It’s both a hold-on-to-your-seat thriller and a pitch-perfect exploration of present day China—the country’s rapacious capitalism, the shocking boom of its cities and the wholesale eradication of its traditions. Review"Walker's shockingly plausible literary debut...[is] an outrageous tale of embezzlement into a rollicking moral drama." — Publisher's Weekly, Starred "Slimy all-American graft oozes from beneath the economic aspirations of contemporary China in this witty, illuminating thriller.Walker's impressive debut novel is a post-millennial noir thriller in which the grubbier impulses of two superpowers intersect with life-altering results.…Though its observations about China's construction boom and the dismal state of American politics are as fresh as the morning news feed, Walker's novel also feels like a disquieting peek deep into the coming decades of global economic upheaval." —Kirkus, Starred "This edgy first novel delivers a scathing indictment of congressional politics as it follows a young aide on a business trip to China.…Walker’s smart writing on a host of issues, including China’s frenzied construction boom, which has paved over ancient traditions block by block, and the sorry state of American politics, gives this cautionary tale frisson." —Booklist "Last Days in Shanghai is both a comedy and a horror story about mistaken identity and moral inertia; it's also a dreamlike tour through the backalleys of Shanghai, a fever-bright landscape that corresponds to the mental labyrinth of fear and desire.The story is fabulous; the language will knock you flat."—Karen Russell, author of New York Times bestseller Swamplandia! "Last Days in Shanghai is about how easily we live our lives in thrall to our own evasions and how fervently we hope for redemption, and its protagonist, who imagines himself to be hardboiled but is really mostly softheaded, is one of those functionaries who helps our corrupt global system toot along despite being all confusion and hopeless compromise. For all his appeal, he presents himself as yet another Innocent Abroad for the same reason most of us do: to deny our complicity in the damage that follows in our wake." —Jim Sheppard, NBA nominee and author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway "Money, sex, and free enterprise: American politics isn’t as bad as you think it is. It’s much worse, and Casey Walker’s truly brilliant first novel about Americans in China pioneers a kind of hallucinatory realism on the subject that leaves the reader laughing and appalled and scared. Last Days in Shanghai knows just how bad things can get, and its hero, an innocent abroad before he gets wised-up, is as American as apple pie and the Republican Party." —Charles Baxter About the AuthorCasey Walker is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University. His writing has appeared in The Believer, Boston Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, novelist Karen Thompson Walker.