I first got wind of The Porcelain Moon a few weeks ago via The New York Times Review of Books, which praised it. My curiosity was piqued because this is a novel that touches upon the small Chinese community in France a few years prior to and during the First World War -- as well as on the lives of a Chinese family from Shanghai who ran an antiques business in Paris -- and, in part, upon the cadres of Chinese contracted workers who were part of the Chinese Labor Corps (CLC) - which was under British command -- and its French equivalent, who provided noncombatant labor, which proved vital to the Allied war effort on the Western Front. 

This is an engaging novel rich in drama and suspense, bringing to the reader the experiences of the Chinese community in France of little more than a century ago, and its personal interactions with Europeans of various social strata.