On the penultimate evening of the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival, top-of-the-bill author Margaret Atwood was driven from another sell-out event to her temporary home at the Excelsior hotel in Causeway Bay.
As the car stopped, the Canadian superstar of letters turned to her escort, a senior festival organiser, and said: 'I'll bet you're glad I'm leaving tomorrow, aren't you?'
'Oh! N ... ' began the organiser. 'Actually, yes!' Atwood, reliably unpredictable, smiled, hugged her companion and left the car.
The author of The Handmaid's Tale and a former Booker Prize winner, Atwood can be tempera-mental, but not here. Throughout the festival she packed houses of all sizes, bore the cross of fame amiably during the repeated ritual of the book-autographing conclave and proved an unstoppable interrogator on at least one occasion from the other side of the fence, as part of the audience. (The event in question, featuring novelist Sophie Gee and environmentalist Julia Whitty, became immortalised in festival circles as 'the sex and s*** talk', but that's at least one other story.)
Rather, the ex-Excelsior exchange was indicative of relief on the part of the festival team that a week and a half of events had been navigated successfully - excepting the calamities built into such Hydra-headed gatherings.
Near the end of 2008, the prospect of the ninth Hong Kong literary festival taking place was improbable. Political wrangling necessitated the installation of a revamped board of directors. But capping that was the surprise resignation of the festival's new general manager; previous incumbent Melissa Long jumped back into the breach.
Sponsorship, in these trying economic times, was a more foreseeable complication. Alongside the title sponsor and the South China Morning Post, former festival director Ilyas Khan's journal the Asia Literary Review shouldered an increased financial burden.
