Nora Waln (1895 – 27 September 1964) was a best-selling American writer and journalist in the 1930s–50s, writing books and articles on her time spent in Germany and China.
[2] In 1918, she was Publicity Secretary of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (later the Near East Foundation) and contributed a foreword to the book Ravished Armenia.
[4] She ended up living for 12 years in the Lin household as a "daughter of affection" and developed this experience into her acclaimed memoir House of Exile, which was published in 1933.
While living in China, Waln met and married George Edward Osland-Hill, an English official in the Chinese Post Office,[5] in 1922.
[8] The book recounts the spread of Hitler's Nazi movement against a backdrop of her despair for the changes in a people she loved.
[10] The book was reissued in paperback by Soho Press in 1992 under a new title, The Approaching Storm: One Woman's Story of Germany, 1934-1938.
With a speaking knowledge of Chinese (in four or five dialects), Japanese and Korean, she has lived in the homes of the people about whom she writes and talks.
She has known Mao Tsetung, Syngman Rhee, Douglas MacArthur, as well as the GIs, Koreans, Turks, British, Dutch, Russian prisoners and other personalities who figure in the tragic drama of Korea.
If you are confused about American policy and Far Eastern affairs, if you wonder about the significance of the MacArthur dismissal, the strength of the Communists in Japan, the attitude of our troops in Korea.
She has recently been reassigned to Europe and will spend the summer of 1952 there as special writer and correspondent.The brochure for her 1946 tour [13] says: "During the war, she spoke extensively to large audiences throughout England and Scotland".
The brochure for her 1955 tour gives more details of her travels: The first year of the Korean war she spent most of her time at the front with the fighting men and was one of six correspondents who were on the Manchurian border when the Chinese communists began their attack.
Miss Waln knew Mao Tse-tung, Communist leader in China, when he was an assistant librarian of a university.