Author Weina Randel discusses The Last Rose of Shanghai: A love story transcending class, race, religion, and even war.

National Jewish Book Award Finalist, The Last Rose of Shanghai

In Japanese-occupied Shanghai, two people from different cultures are drawn together by fate and the freedom of music...

Weina Dai Randel is the award-winning author of three novels, The Last Rose of Shanghai, The Moon in the Palace, and The Empress of Bright Moon, a historical duology about Wu Zetian, China’s only female emperor. Weina is the winner of the RWA RITA Award, a finalist of the National Jewish Book Awards, the Goodreads Choice Award semifinalist, and the RT Book Reviewers Choice nominee. Her novels have been translated into seven languages and sold worldwide.

Born in China, Weina came to the United States at twenty-four, when she began to speak, write and dream in English. She holds an MA in English from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. She has worked as the subject-matter expert for Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program and as an adjunct professor for Eastfield College. Interviews with Weina have appeared on WFAA’s Good Morning Texas and in such publications as China Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and RT Book Reviews. After living in Texas for years, Weina now resides in Boston with her loving husband, two children, and a family of chipmunks in the backyard.