Deep Night
by Caroline Petit
Soho Press
HK$192
It is 1941. Europe is heavily engaged in the second world war, Japan is at war with Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government and its National Revolutionary Army following the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937 - and there are rumours in Hong Kong that Japan plans to invade.
Leah Kolbe, 23, runs her late father's antiques business from her home on The Peak and is planning to marry her solicitor fiance Jonathan Hawatyne. Despite taking precautions against possible Japanese invasion by shipping most of her collection to the US, her life goes on much as it did before: cue a colourful account of a particularly boozy party at The Peninsula, attended by Ernest Hemingway and his third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, in which Hemingway challenges fellow bohemians to swig from a bottle of rice wine containing dead snakes. The party is about to come to an end for the revellers and Hong Kong.
On December 7 the Japanese navy bombs Pearl Harbour in Hawaii and the US and Britain declare war. Jonathan, a reservist, is called up by a message on the screen while watching a movie at a cinema with Leah; she is left to make plans to try to survive an imminent Japanese attack.