季風人文講壇第74期：Scott D. Seligman

Murder in Manchuria: The True Story of a Jewish Virtuoso, Russian Fascists, a French Diplomat, and a Japanese Spy in Occupied China

with Scott D. Seligman (蘇思綱)

October 9, 2025｜In English

In Murder in Manchuria, Scott D. Seligman explores an unsolved murder set amid the chaos of northeast China before World War II. Semyon Kaspé, a young Jewish musician, is kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on orders of Japanese military overlords who covet his father’s wealth. When local authorities obstruct the search, a young French diplomat launches his own investigation. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the book also tells the larger story of the twenty thousand Jews of Harbin and their hasty exodus. It won the 2024 Independent Publisher Book Awards and the American Bookfest 20th Annual Best Book Awards.

About the Speaker 

Scott D. Seligman (苏思纲) is a national award-winning writer of narrative nonfiction and biography with interests in Chinese and Jewish history. He headed the Beijing office of the U.S.-China Business Council shortly after normalization of U.S.-China relations, and has also served as a congressional legislative assistant, managed a multinational PR agency in China, and worked as communications director for a Fortune 50 company. He holds a history degree from Princeton and a master’s from Harvard. He is the author of four books on early Chinese-American history and several Jewish-themed books.