VIRTUAL: Adam Brookes at the Hudson Library [2/16]

The Hudson Library is hosting journalist Adam Brookes on February 16th at 7pm. Brookes will be discussing his book, Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City.

*Note: this is a virtual event and you need to register to join. If you'd like to register, please click here.

In the spring of 1933, rumors of war circulated through the quiet courtyards and palaces of Peking’s Forbidden City. All-out war between China and Japan was inevitable and the curators of the Forbidden City were faced with a terrible question: when war comes, what is to be done to protect the vast imperial art collections in their charge? The collections carried China’s deepest and most ancient memories; they traced the course of a civilization. For sixteen years, under the quiet leadership of museum director Ma Heng, the curators would go on to transport the imperial art collections thousands of miles across China. In their search for safety, the curators and their fragile cargo journeyed through the maelstrom of violence, chaos, and starvation that was China's Second World War. Told for the first time in English and playing out across a vast historical canvas, this is the exhilarating story of a small group of men and women who, when faced with war's onslaught on civilization, chose to resist. 

Adam Brookes is a Canadian-born, British-American novelist and journalist. Over his two and a half decades in journalism, he has worked for BBC News as Jakarta correspondent, Beijing correspondent, and Washington correspondent, and has also reported from many other places, including Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of multiple spy thriller novels including Night Heron, which draws on his life in journalism and years in China. Fragile Cargo is his first work of narrative nonfiction.