Hong Kong, by the books
We've yet to see the definitive Hong Kong novel, but the city has featured in notable works by many famous authors, writes James Kidd
Has there ever been a truly great Hong Kong novel - or, for that matter, a great novel about Hong Kong? Asking around various literary types, the question was greeted with a unanimous "no".
The reasons include Hong Kong's lack of interest in literary fiction, its preoccupation with commerce not culture, and - more fruitfully - the sheer elusiveness of the place. Western writers tend to express this as an exotic otherness; for Asian-born authors, Hong Kong's mystery is the result of almost unimaginably complex currents of global politics, economics and society.
Certainly a great deal of Hong Kong literature is populist. Barbara Cartland ( Fragrant Flower, 1976), the Hardy Boys ( The Clue of the Hissing Serpent, 1974) and Nancy Drew ( The Mystery of the Fire Dragon, 1961) have all stopped over. Harry Bosch flirted with Hong Kong for years before finally visiting in Michael Connelly's 9 Dragons (2009).
More serious engagement is provided by John Le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy (1977), which exploits Hong Kong as a hub for an array of vested global interests and almost as many drunken journalists. Martin Booth's Music on the Bamboo Radio (1997) combines boy's-own adventure during the second world war with a fable of cultural exchange. Jane Gardam's Old Filth (2004) transforms the old acronym (Failed in London Try Hong Kong) into a judge's poignantly comic account of a life lived and a life wasted.
While the city has yet to produce - or inspire - a book widely regarded as a truly great novel, there are still some rollicking good reads involving the barren rock
David Mitchell puts Hong Kong to spectral literary purpose in Ghostwritten (1999): banker Neal Brose is haunted by the memory of his ex-wife and the ghost of a Chinese girl before collapsing in front of the Big Buddha on Lantau.
One of the more memorable, if brief, encounters belongs to Flashman in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman and the Dragon (1985): "Hong Kong," our naughty hero declares, "is a splendid place to get out of".