Set in Shanghai in the late 1930s, this is the story of the relationship between a disillusioned former US diplomat and a refugee White Russian countess reduced to a sordid life in the city's bars. Todd Jackson (mid-40s), once an American diplomat filled with idealism, has lost his sight several years earlier, and is now languishing in Shanghai's grand hotels and elite gentlemen's clubs, a burnt-out case, He has become bitterly disillusioned by realpolitik and the seemingly unavoidable nature of war and conflict. more