Next month is going to look at Hong Kong or Macau (or China generally if you can't find anything specifically from there). Here are some suggestions - as always these are suggestions only, if you find something you fancy more then go ahead. Same format as always - find a book, read a book, turn up and talk about it. I won't be hosting this one cos ironically I will be in China, but Ellie is going to stand in.
- Xi Xi — My City
Probably one of the most interesting places to start. Xi Xi was one of Hong Kong's major literary figures, and My City (1979) is an unconventional, lyrical portrait of everyday Hong Kong. Rather than a conventional plot, it moves through the thoughts and observations of young people living in the city.
2. Dung Kai-cheung — Cantonese Love Stories
Much more approachable than Atlas. It's a collection of short pieces about relationships and ordinary life in 1990s Hong Kong, with lots of attention to consumer culture and the texture of everyday city life.
3. Chan Ho-kei — The Borrowed
A Hong Kong crime novel told through six cases spanning several decades of the city's history. It's a particularly good choice if you want something plot-driven while still learning about Hong Kong's changing society.
4. Hon Lai-chu — The Kite Family
Strange, dreamlike and quite dark. It's less interested in conventional realism and more in loneliness, memory and the psychological experience of living in a dense city.
5. Eileen Chang — Love in a Fallen City
A classic novella set partly in wartime Hong Kong. Chang is one of the great Chinese writers of the 20th century, and this is a beautiful, melancholy story about love, class and social
6. Kit Fan — Diamond Hill
A contemporary novel set in Diamond Hill in 1987, when the area still contained one of Hong Kong's last major shantytowns. It juxtaposes poverty and displacement with the extraordinary financial transformation of late-colonial Hong Kong.
7. Janice Y. K. Lee — The Expatriates
If you want modern Hong Kong, this follows three American women living there and explores expatr
I think a bit got cut off. 8. John le Carré — The Honourable Schoolboy
A very different proposition: 1970s Hong Kong, espionage, British colonialism and the Cold War. Much of the novel moves around Southeast Asia, but Hong Kong is central to its atmosphere and plot.
Macau
- Henrique de Senna Fernandes — The Bewitching Braid
Fernandes was a Macanese writer, and this novel is set in Macau in the early 20th century. It follows a young woman from a Chinese family and explores the complicated social world between Chinese and Portuguese Macanese communities. It's romantic, historical, and very evocative of old Macau.
10. Henrique de Senna Fernandes — The Marriage of a Chinese Woman
Another excellent portrait of traditional Macanese society. Fernandes is particularly valuable because he writes from inside the old Macanese community rather than treating Macau simply as an exotic colonial setting.
