When We Were Orphans

Description

When We Were Orphans is a literary detective novel that follows Christopher Banks, a celebrated British detective, as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of his parents in Shanghai during his childhood.

The story unfolds through Christopher’s reflections, from his early years in 1900s Shanghai—where his father worked for a British trading company and his mother was an anti-opium activist—to his adulthood in interwar London, where he becomes a renowned private investigator. Haunted by the past, he eventually returns to a war-torn Shanghai in the 1930s, convinced that solving the mystery of his missing parents will somehow “save the world.”