The Asian literary spy genre isn’t a defined genre as such, but perhaps it should be. Xiao Bai’s French Concession stands in a solid pantheon (if one may call it pantheon within such an amorphously-bordered genre that encompasses such disparate geographies and time periods) that includes Mai JIa’s recent thriller Decoded, compared to Eileen Chang’s Lust, Caution (per one review) and poses as a counterpoint to a host of other Asian literary spy thrillers written as far back as Francis Van Wyck Mason’s 1933 Shanghai Bund Murders. One key difference with Xiao Bai’s offering is that it’s a literary spy novel written by an Asian writer in his native language, and subsequently translated for a Western audience, thus the translation itself (by translator Chengxin Jiang) stands as a conduit that needs to be considered.
