Fragrant Harbour
The chances are that your bookcase is already home to Chris Patten's East And West or Frank Welsh's A History Of Kong Kong, perhaps Jan Morris' Hong Kong: Epilogue To An Empire, a Timothy Mo novel, or Richard Mason's The World Of Suzie Wong.
Slide them along the shelf to make room for Fragrant Harbour. Five years after the handover, the great Hong Kong expat novel is here.
The hype surrounding the release of British author and literary critic John Lanchester's third novel began months ago, when Faber and Faber in Britain and the United States publisher, Marian Wood Books, began talking it up and releasing early proof copies to the media. Unfortunately, neither Faber nor Marian Wood managed to get the 40-year-old author on a plane to Hong Kong to promote his book this month, though there is talk of a visit in May next year.
Critics applauded Lanchester's versatility in his two very different earlier novels, The Debt To Pleasure (1996) and Mr Phillips (2000). Like the former, which gave a taste of the gastronomic world Lanchester once inhabited as a restaurant reviewer, Fragrant Harbour is divided into four parts. The plot sweeps through most of the 20th century; this book is on a far grander scale than its predecessors.
A prologue introduces an elderly Tom Stewart, the novel's central character, before the first-person narrative of young British journalist Dawn Stone draws the reader into the saga proper.
Stone uproots herself to join a high-profile magazine in Hong Kong just before the handover. She is initially wide-eyed about the landing at Kai Tak airport, the Peak's 'groovy green tram car', the chattering Filipino domestic helpers around Statue Square on Sundays, the distinction between Cantonese and Putonghua, the boozing and schmoozing of junk trips and the ridiculous amount of money it is possible to earn here.
Hong Kong residents may find the description of such familiar issues dull, but Lanchester's portrayal is accurate, and Stone's impressionable and self-absorbed reactions help us understand her subsequent decision to quit journalism and go 'over to the other side', as media liaison for a local tycoon.