Book review: Shanghai homes: palimpsests of private life by Jie Li

In the dazzling global metropolis of Shanghai, what has it meant to call the city home? In this account – part microhistory, part memoir – Jie Li salvages intimate recollections by successive generations of inhabitants of two vibrant, culturally mixed Shanghai alleyways from the Republican, Maoist, and post-Mao eras. Tim Chamberlain reviews.