Have You Read These 7 Books That Offer A Literary Journey Through Hong Kong?

Hong Kong’s position as a former British outpost on the tip of the Chinese mainland has given rise to a distinct literary tradition that combines the work of Chinese intellectuals who moved to the island, the influx of migrants before and after World War II, and those who continue to live there as it struggles to find itself after crackdowns on freedom of speech and expression. Hong Kong was the first Asian country to host an international writer’s festival and its literary icons are numerous: Janice Y K Lee, Dung Kai-cheung, Martin Booth, Louise Ho and Timothy Mo, to name a few.

If you’re keen on learning about Hong Kong through its tomes, here are seven books that will have you hooked from the first page.

‘Letters Home 回家’ By Jennifer Wong (2020)

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Jennifer Wong studied English at Oxford University and received an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Published by Nine Arches Press, "Letters Home 回家" is her third collection of poems. It interrogates the complexities of being between nations, languages and cultures. Travelling across multiple borders of history and place, Wong’s poems examine what it means to be returning home, and whether that return is to a location, a country, a shared dream or a language. From the story of a derelict village school in Guizhou to the graffiti and tear gas in Hong Kong’s streets, the poems note how fragments of different cultural, historical and linguistic worlds shape us.

‘The Piano Teacher’ By Janice Y K Lee (2009)

The Hong Kong-born American author has published novels to critical acclaim and most recently released her 2016 novel “The Expatriates.” However, it was her debut novel, which became a global bestseller, that will sweep you away with its tale of love and betrayal set in war-torn 1940s Hong Kong. The story revolves around Englishman Will Truesdale’s passionate relationship with Trudy Liang, a Eurasian socialite. The affair is soon threatened by the invasion of the Japanese as World War II overwhelms their part of the world. Ten years later, a newly arrived piano teacher also begins a fateful affair. The novel moves fluidly between the two love affairs that happen a decade apart, ultimately culminating in the revelations of war-time secrets and betrayals.

‘Mourning A Breast’ By Xī Xī (2024)

In 1989, the acclaimed Hong Kong writer Xī Xī (the pen name of author Zhāng Yàn) was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her semi-autobiographical novel “Mourning a Breast” is a disarmingly honest and inventive account of the author’s experience of a mastectomy and her subsequent recovery. Addressing her reader as frankly and unashamedly as an old friend, she describes what she is going through; finds consolation in art, literature and cinema; and advocates for a universal literacy of the body. Originally published in Taiwan in 1992, Xī’s genre-bending exploration of those experiences have been faithfully translated into English by Jennifer Feeley. “Mourning a Breast” was heralded as one of the first Chinese-language books to cast off the stigma of writing about illness and to expose the myths associated with breast cancer.

‘The Borrowed’ By Chan Ho-Kei (2014)

Chan Ho-kei is an award-winning author of mystery novels who writes in Mandarin Chinese. Many of his books have been translated into various languages, like “The Borrowed,” which was translated into English by Jeremy Tiang. It is the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a Hong Kong detective whose career spans 50 years of the territory’s history. A deductive powerhouse, Kwan becomes a legend in the force, nicknamed “the Eye of Heaven” by his awe-struck colleagues. Divided into six sections told in reverse chronological order—each of which covers an important case in Kwan’s career and takes place at a pivotal moment in Hong Kong history from the 1960s to the present day—the book follows Kwan from his experiences during the Leftist riots in 1967 when a bombing plot threatens many lives; the conflict between the Hong Kong police and the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1977; the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989; the handover in 1997; all the way to the present day in 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve his final case. Along the way readers will meet Communist rioters, ultraviolent gangsters, stallholders at the city’s many covered markets, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing. The gripping novel will keep you reading late into the night.

‘AFTERSHOCK: Essays From Hong Kong’ By Small Tune Press (2020)

Unless you have been living under a rock, you would have heard about Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the use of China’s national security law to crack down on dissent in the island since then. In 2020, Small Tune Press published a series of forceful, introspective essays by 11 young journalists examining a city transformed beyond recognition. “AFTERSHOCK: Essays from Hong Kong” features writing by Holmes Chan, Karen Cheung, Elaine Yu, Sum Lok-kei, Rachel Cheung, Hsiuwen Liu, Ezra Cheung, Nicolle Liu, Jessie Pang and two anonymous contributors, most of whom were at the frontlines of Hong Kong's historic protest movement. The writers try to find meaning in chaos, revisiting key moments that profoundly changed the city and themselves. The writing is incisive and honest, with the essays delving into the complexities hidden behind familiar headlines.

‘The Drunkard’ By Liu Yichang (1962)

“The Drunkard” is one of the first full-length stream-of-consciousness novels written in Mandarin Chinese. It was first published in 1962 as a serial in a Hong Kong evening paper. Liu Yichang’s unnamed narrator is a writer at odds with the world who sinks into a drunken nadir. His plight can be seen to represent that of a whole intelligentsia, a whole culture, degraded by the brutal forces of history: the Second Sino-Japanese War and the rampant capitalism of post-war Hong Kong. The often surrealistic description of the narrator’s inexorable descent through the seedy bars and night-clubs of Hong Kong, of his numerous encounters with dance girls and his ever more desperate bouts of drinking, is counterpointed by a series of wide-ranging literary essays analysing the Chinese classical tradition, the popular culture of China and the West, and the modernist movement in Western and Chinese literature. The 2020 translation by Charlotte Chun-lam Yiu takes the reader to the very heart of Hong Kong, making this book one to have on your bedside table.

‘Myself A Mandarin: Memoirs Of A Special Magistrate’ By Austin Coates (1968)

Austin Coates was a British civil servant and writer who served as a RAF Intelligence officer in World War II. In 1949, he joined the colonial service and occupied civil positions in Hong Kong and Malaysia before retiring in 1962 to become a full-time writer. His best-known book is “Myself a Mandarin: Memoirs of a Special Magistrate” which chronicles his experiences into a world about which he knew next to nothing and had to learn as fast as possible. Coates takes the reader with him through the errors, puzzles and bafflements of 16 cases which came to his court. Whether he is dealing with cows, watercress beds, squatters, dragons, quarrelling wives or a Buddhist abbot, the reader feels like they are the judge sitting in on the case. There’s a good chance you will probably read this book in one sitting.