Memoir found in attic could be as big a hit as Wild Swans

A Chinese family memoir that languished in an attic for half a century is being hailed as a future hit as big as international bestseller Wild Swans.

Agent Susan Mears is in talks with major publishers at this week’s London Book Fair after the manuscript documenting appalling hardship and bravery was discovered by London writer Howard Webster four months ago.

It tells the story of Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, who rose from extreme poverty to become a colonel in the Cantonese Air Force, a professor, banker — and grandfather to Mr Webster’s Chinese-American wife, Julianne Lee.

Stephen Lee wrote down his family history in 1955 with the aim of providing a record when he died for his four children including Julianne’s father, Huey. When Mr Webster was given the dusty papers to read on a family visit to the US with the couple’s newborn twins, he felt it must reach a wider public.

“Even though English wasn’t a first language, I thought it quite beautiful and moving and in places utterly harrowing,” he said. “It’s a love letter to his kids. It’s a very unusual thing.”

Mr Webster began editing the book and on the family’s return home to Fulham he mentioned it to Susan Mears who hopes to sign a big deal on the book, now called Canton Elegy, in days.

“It’s absolutely captivating and a real page-turner,” she said. “Effectively it’s a male version of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans but much more of an engaging read.”

It charts the ups and downs from Stephen Jin-Nom Lee’s birth in poverty in China in 1902 through great success but also horrendous upheaval with war and revolution.

In 1941 his wife, Belle, and their children trekked 300 miles on foot after being trapped behind enemy lines. The family were living in Hong Kong but when the Japanese invaded Stephen was away opening a new branch of the bank he was working for.

Belle took the children and walked through enemy territory to escape back to China and safety. Stephen eventually took them to find peace in California, but worked as a grocer until his death in 1970 and regarded himself a failure.

Julianne Lee, who works in corporate affairs in the City, said her family previously had no idea how to get the book published as her grandfather had always hoped. But she is thrilled and grateful that it will happen now, through her husband’s efforts.

The family history remains important to her, she said. “I feel that the sacrifices my grandfather and grandmother made in their lives would be wasted if I didn’t continue to achieve something on their behalf.”