Nien Cheng (1915–2009) was the author of the critically-acclaimed, international best-selling memoir Life and Death in Shanghai. Released from prison in 1973, Cheng emigrated in 1980, first to Canada and then to the United States, where she became a U.S. citizen in 1988. Cheng died at her home in Washington, D.C. in 2009 at the age of 94.