'I feel lost in Hong Kong': why travel writer Paul Theroux finds the city 'impenetrable'

Earlier this month, Paul Theroux appeared at the Singapore Writers Festival, where he gave a lecture on his extensive travels. He also took part in a panel discussion about whether foreign aid undermines recovery in conflict zones. His attitude to this debate can best be summed up in the first line of a 2005 piece he wrote for The New York Times: "There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment."

And he gave a Sunday afternoon talk at the National Museum of Singapore, which was followed by a screening of Saint Jack, the 1979 film based on his "infamous" - as the programme notes put it - novel. Film and book had both been banned for several decades by the Lion City's government. Now, there they were, revered cultural objects and as much a testimony to Singapore's transformation through the ages as the nearby permanent exhibition on its previous 700 years.

A few days later, on a grey Hong Kong afternoon, he's still marvelling at the unlikeliness of it. During the late 1960s, when he lectured in English literature at what was then the University of Singapore, he could never, he says, have imagined any sort of literary festival in the place.

"Travelling in Singapore and China now," he says, "you feel like Rip Van Winkle. You come back and everything's changed. No one knows you. They take the living arrangements for granted. And you think: I don't recognise this place."

He's in an armchair, having a beer in the Sky Lounge on the 49th floor of The Upper House, in Admiralty. At 73, he doesn't look much older than the owlish, bespectacled American who's been gazing, level-eyed, at readers from book covers for 45 years. The following evening, he's due to address the Royal Geographical Society's annual dinner, the first time he's spoken at an RGS function here and it's a sold-out event. As the society's website puts it, "Paul Theroux virtually invented the modern travel narrative by recounting his grand tours by rail through Asia, Europe and the Americas."

So it's odd to hear this global traveller say, emphatically, "I feel lost in Hong Kong. I don't know how you'd write about it, it's impenetrable. There's so much of it … I don't mean writing about the restaurants and hotels, I mean about the city itself. You'd have to live here to do that."