A. Y. Chao

Shanghai Immortal, published by Hodderscape in June 2023, was an instant number one Sunday Times bestseller, an unusual start for a first novel. Its narrator is Lady Jing, half fox spirit and half vampire, pawned as a child to the King of Hell and pulled into a plot over a stolen dragon pearl that runs between the underworld and the jazz clubs of 1930s Shanghai. A. Y. Chao is a Chinese Canadian writer who practised law before turning to fiction and now lives in London with her family. She describes her subject as the place where identity and belonging overlap, and the book carries its Chinese folklore in a voice that is comic and foul-mouthed rather than reverent. Two further volumes were planned to complete the trilogy.