I am delighted to welcome author, Deborah Swift onto the blog today.
Deborah is one of my favourite authors and I have read a few of her books. I will add links to my reviews at the bottom of this post so do check them out. I am also looking forward to sharing my thoughts of The Enemy's Wife on 12th May so keep your eye's posted for my review.
Before I hand over to Deborah, let me tell you a little about the book.
The Blurb
A poignant story of the impossible choices we make in the shadow of war, for fans of Daisy Wood and Marius Gabriel.
1941. When Zofia’s beloved husband Haru is conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army, she is left to navigate Japanese-occupied Shanghai alone.
Far from home and surrounded by a country at war, Zofia finds unexpected comfort in a bond with Hilly, a spirited young refugee escaping Nazi-occupied Austria.
As violence tightens its grip on the city, they seek shelter with Theo, Zofia’s American employer. But with every passing day, the horrors of war and Haru’s absence begin to reshape Zofia’s world – and her heart.
Can she still love someone who has become the enemy?
Over to you Deborah?
The Hidden Vice of Opium in 1940s Shanghai
One of my characters in The Enemy’s Wife gets caught up in the grip of an opium addiction. The setting of The Enemy’s Wife is Shanghai – the Paris of the East. Beneath its dazzling and glamorous appearance, it was also a hotbed of corruption, sleaze, and of course the drug trade.
The Shanghai underworld was shaped by one of the most influential commodities in modern Chinese history: opium. To understand opium’s grip on Shanghai, it is necessary to look back to the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century which forced China to open its port to foreign powers such as England, making Shanghai one of the most important trading posts among them. The foreign concessions within Shanghai (areas governed by British, US and other European countries operated under their own legal systems, which allowed the opium trade to flourish in ways that would have been impossible under a unified administration.
The Opium Economy
Opium was not just a vice; it was a business—one that generated enormous profits. Shanghai’s position as a commercial hub made it an ideal distribution centre for opium imported from British India. The trade involved a wide network of merchants, corrupt officials, criminal gangs, and even legitimate businesses that laundered opium money. In The Enemy’s Wife one of the characters is based on members of the so-called Green Gang, one of Shanghai’s most notorious criminal gangs. They were corrupt and lawless, controlling the distribution, protecting the dens, and running rackets with various political figures.
For many businessmen, involvement in opium was less about addiction and more about survival or profit and the revenue generated by opium was difficult for authorities to ignore. Taxes on opium sales became a significant source of income, creating a moral and political dilemma: how to eliminate a destructive drug without destabilizing public finances.
Class and Opium
By the turn of the century, opium was deeply embedded both in Shanghai’s economy and in its social fabric. Opium dens ranged from luxurious lounges catering to wealthy elites, to grim, dimly lit rooms serving the urban poor. Smoking opium was both a recreational activity and a symbol of status in some circles, while in others it represented despair and decline.
Among the wealthy, opium habits were a social ritual, often conducted in ornate settings with finely crafted pipes and elaborate ceremonies. I enjoyed researching the paraphernalia that was
used by the wealthy people in my book. At the same time, I was aware that in the poorer Chinese population, opium was used as a means of escape from gruelling factory work, starvation, and economic hardship. By the time of my novel, the 1940s, people began to view opium as a symbol of China’s weakness. Anti-opium campaigns gained momentum in part because of international pressure when westerners grew addicted to ‘the poppy’.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the Chinese Nationalist government sought to suppress the opium trade, but the Japanese occupation of Shanghai further complicated the situation. Occupying forces exploited the opium trade as a means of social control and to make money for themselves. Soldiers used opium as a means to ‘sweeten’ their experiences in the war. In some cases, addiction among the local population was actively encouraged by the Japanese invaders to weaken resistance.
In the end, the turning point in Shanghai’s opium obsession came with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Unlike previous regimes, the new government adopted a zero-tolerance approach to opium. Dealers faced severe penalties, including execution, while users were compelled to undergo treatment. Within a few years, opium use in Shanghai and across China was dramatically reduced.
This was too late for my character though, who must use his own willpower to overcome the perils of his addiction. Will he succeed?
I enjoyed researching opium dens in 1940s Shanghai, and for this I was indebted to Opium by Martin Booth and Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction by Steven Martin.
The rise and fall of opium in Shanghai is a powerful reminder of how deeply one plant and its trade can shape the history and destiny of a city.
The Enemy’s Wife is out now in ebook, audio and paperback.
Thank you Deborah for being my guest today. That was absolutely fascinating and I can't wait to read the book.
Book Details
ISBN: 978 0008739737
Publisher: HQ Digital
Formats: e-book, audio and paperback
No. of Pages: 352 (paperback)
Series: Book 2 in the Survivors of War series
Purchase Links
About the Author
Deborah used to be a costume designer for the BBC, before becoming a writer. Now she lives in an old English school house in a village full of 17th Century houses, near the glorious Lake District. Deborah has an award-winning historical fiction blog at her website www.deborahswift.com.
Deborah loves to write about how extraordinary events in history have transformed the lives of ordinary people, and how the events of the past can live on in her books and still resonate today.
Her WW2 novel Past Encounters was a BookViral Award winner, and The Poison Keeper was a winner of the Wishing Shelf Book of the Decade.
You can also find Deborah at:
Links To My Reviews of Deborah's Other Books
Deborah Swift's Desert Island Books
(ARC and media courtesy of The Coffee Pot Book Club)
(all opinions are my own)
(Bookshop.org affiliated)
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