About this program:

TALK | Murder in Manchuria- The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China, with Scott Seligman | Thursday, January 4 @ 7 p.m. ET

Featuring: Scott Seligman

Scott Seligman In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the run-up to World War II. The story, centered in the Jewish community of the city of Harbin, unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria—an area some called China’s “Wild East”—and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspé, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected, antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father’s wealth. When local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own investigation.  Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the true, tragic saga of Kaspé is told in the context of the larger, improbable story of the lives of the twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott D. Seligman recounts the events that led to their arrival and their hasty exodus—and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for decades. Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning writer with special interest in both Jewish and Chinese history. A former corporate executive, he spent much of his career in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China; he is fluent in Mandarin and reads and writes Chinese. He has also worked as a legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. Congress, lobbied the Chinese government on behalf of American business, managed a multinational public relations agency in China, served as spokesperson and communications director for a Fortune 50 company, and taught English in Taiwan and Chinese in Washington, DC. He holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard. He has written four books on early Chinese-American history, and his first Jewish-themed book, The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902, won gold medals in the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards and the 2002–21 Reader Views Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards. Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China, with Scott Seligman TALK Thursday, January 4 @ 7 p.m. ET Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA Seligman, Scott, D