Excerpt from Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

———

"Do you live here?"

Paul didn't know where the voice was coming from at first. He was so startled he nearly dropped the lemon cake from his fork.

"Or are you here on business?"

It was the woman at the table next to his. She must be American, Paul thought. No one else would start a conversation with a stranger in a public place just like that. How often he had had to defend himself against the hello-where-do-you-come-from? chattiness of an American passenger sitting next to him on an airplane.

"No, I live here," Paul replied.

"Oh, how interesting. May I ask if you've lived here long?"

"Thirty years," he answered briefly. He did not want anything he said to give the impression that he was interested in having a conversation.

"Thirty years! My God, how can you stand this number of people?" Paul looked over at the woman. Judging by her slight but unmistakable accent, she was probably from the Midwest. She was slim, a sporty type, wearing a light-brown trouser suit, white shirt, and a string of pearls. Her hands trembled as she lifted her cup of coffee. They were delicate, refined hands, with long fingers wearing gold rings, one of which was set with small diamonds, but even the precious stones glittering in the light could not detract from the fact that the hands were shaking. Paul was unable to guess her age. Her face looked much younger than her hands; it was smooth and disconcertingly free of wrinkles, but small pockets of skin hung from her neck as they did in an older woman. She could just as easily be in her midforties as in her early sixties. She had one of those very smooth faces that strove to give away as little as possible, that was practiced in concealing hurts and worries, the tracks that life left behind. She was wearing sneakers, but her trousers, blouse, and, most of all, her jacket, were much too warm for the season. She was clearly used to air-conditioning. She had probably taken a taxi straight from her hotel to the Peak, and not even noticed how hot and humid it was yet. He said nothing, in the hope that his silence would end their conversation.

"Don't the crowds bother you? Or do you get used to it with time?"

He took a deep breath and replied, in order not to seem impolite.

"I live on Lamma, a small island. It's quieter there."

She nodded, as though that explained everything.

"You must travel a great deal in China, mustn't you?"

"I used to, yes. But not so much now. And you?" He regretted the question immediately. What on earth was he doing? How could he have been so stupid as to ask her such an open question? That was the opening she had probably been waiting for. Now she would tell him all about her trips to China or about her friend's or her husband's travels, about the unusual table manners, about the burping and the farting and the noisy eating at mealtimes. About the toddlers who did not wear diapers but simply shit on the street through the slit in their trousers. Or about the skyscrapers in Shanghai and the expensive Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs on the streets, which she had not expected from a Communist country. And at the end, thought Paul, she would ask if the Chinese really smashed open the skulls of monkeys while they were still alive and sucked the brains out with relish. But instead of holding forth with the torrent of speech that Paul feared, the woman stayed silent and looked him straight in the face for the first time. He shrank. Did they know each other? He felt as if he had seen her before somewhere. In fact, he was quite sure of it. Her big blue eyes. That penetrating gaze. The restlessness in that look. The nerviness. The trembling. The fear. She was so familiar to him that it seemed like he had last seen her yesterday. They had met before. But where?

"Do we know each other?"

"I don't think so."

"You look familiar to me. Do you work in a bank? Maybe you know my ex-wife, Meredith Leibovitz?"

Excerpted from Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker. Copyright © 2015 by Jan-Philipp Sendker. Excerpted by permission of 37 Ink/Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.