The most brilliant of his literary contemporaries during the 1920s and 1930s, young Mu Shiying enjoys the jazzy exhilaration of central Shanghai as he defends the right to exercise his talent without regard to the restrictions imposed by competing political ideologies. In 1934, when fate leads him to meet a sophisticated woman, Mu immediately knows that she is different from the others he has met. Qiu Peipei is a quintessential modern urban woman who, like Mu Shiying, enjoys Western culture and dancing. There is no question she is his true love. But there are problems: Qiu is living within a prison created by an increasingly frightening and real nightmare from which there is no escape. Worse yet, there are those who want Mu dead, simply because he writes what he feels. Shanghai Scarlet is a riveting recreation of Old Shanghai in all its exhilaration, degradation, and danger as a talented modernist writer and sophisticated courtesan meet, intertwine their lives, and attempt to keep their love alive during a time of political turmoil.