Great writing about Hong Kong
Out in the harbour, at the end of summer, fishermen feed the hungry ghosts. They float paper boats shaped like junks and steamships. One is double-prowed like the cross-harbour Star Ferry which plies its way back and forth between Hong Kong [island] and Kowloon, never having to turn around. The fishermen load each tiny paper boat with some tea leaves, a drop of cooking oil, a spoonful of rice, a splash of petrol, before setting it afloat. Boats for the lost at sea, for the drowned. They hire musicians to clang cymbals. Children throw burning spirit money into the waves.
Extract from White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway If you've ever stared at the vast, twinkling skyline of Hong Kong at night, or watched the sun rise over Lantau peak, it will come as little surprise to hear that HK has inspired some of the world's greatest writers to pen some of the world's most famous literature. Here are some of the best books ever written about Hong Kong.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee (2009) This beautiful novel, set in the years both during and after the Second World War, tracks the life and loves of a married English woman, new to Hong Kong. After being hired as a piano teacher by a rich Chinese family, she falls for the family's driver, a man with a tragic past.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre (1977) The second novel, and for many people the best, novel in Le Carre's celebrated Karla Trilogy, this book follows the perceptive yet tight lipped super spy George Smiley and his attempts to construct a reliable intelligence network. This involves sending one of his agents to the strange, paranoid streets of colonial Hong Kong.
The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre (1977) The second novel, and for many people the best, novel in Le Carre's celebrated Karla Trilogy, this book follows the perceptive yet tight lipped super spy George Smiley and his attempts to construct a reliable intelligence network. This involves sending one of his agents to the strange, paranoid streets of colonial Hong Kong.