Hotel Shanghai is the second of three “hotel novels” by Vicki Baum. The story is set in 1937, at a time when immigrants to Shanghai did not need a visa. Nine people from different backgrounds meet at a hotel. Each driven by private or political reasons, they have come to a city which is portrayed as a refuge for the stranded and an arena for economic and political conflicts of interest. Vicki Baum interweaves the life stories of each of her protagonists as if in a kaleidoscope, describing their everyday lives in Shanghai and their experiences of homelessness. The novel ends with them being killed in a bomb attack on the hotel during the Second Sino-Japanese War. As with all her novels, Vicki Baum had researched the historical and political circumstances in meticulous detail. Fact is mingled with fiction, the characters are depicted as “fictitious examples of real fates” (Bettina Bannasch/Gerhild Rochus (Ed.), Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Exilliteratur [Handbook of German-Language Exile Literature], 2013).

The German-language first edition of Hotel Shanghai was published by Querido Verlag, Amsterdam, in 1939. Translations and licensed editions appeared in the USA, England, the Netherlands, Sweden, Iceland, Brazil, Norway and Spain. In 1940, the Shanghai daily newspaper 8 Uhr Abendblatt published the novel in serial form. However, other exile press publications took no notice of it.

Further reading:
Bannasch, Bettina, Rochus, Gerhild (Hg.): Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Exilliteratur. Von Heinrich Heine bis Herta Müller, Berlin: de Gruyter 2013, S. 226-233