The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai – Ruiyan Xu

When an explosion reverberates through the Swan Hotel in Shanghai, it is not just shards of glass and rubble that come crashing down. Li Jing, a successful and happily married businessman, awakens from brain surgery to find he is able to utter only the faltering phases of English he learnt as a child – a language that his wife Meiling and their young son cannot speak.

When an American neurologist arrives, tasked with teaching Li Jing to speak fluently again, she is as disoriented as her patient in this bewitching, bewildering city. As doctor and patient grow closer, feelings neither of them anticipated begin to take hold – feelings that Meiling, who must fight to keep both her husband’s business and her family afloat, does not need a translator to understand.