A CIA double agent holds the fate of China—and the world—in his hands in this gripping spy thriller from the author of The Man Who Loved Mata Hari.

John Polly enters Shanghai in 1948 on a muggy, velvet evening, just in time for the Communist takeover of China. It marks only his fourth month in America’s newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. Over the next two decades, Polly will become The White MandarinOnly pages into this stunning novel, readers will easily understand why Sherman has earned comparison to the great John le Carré and Graham Greene. It is both a story of very personal love and loss, and an insightful history of China between the rise of Chairman Mao and the 1972 visit by President Nixon. Anyone looking to understand the China of yesterday and today—its power, its flaws, its beauty—need look no further than The White Mandarin.