Peter Gordon
At the epicenter of our city’s English reading culture is Peter Gordon. Involved in the founding of the Asian Review of Books, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Man Asian Literary Prize, the annual Book Fair’s popular forums and e-bookseller Paddyfield, Gordon has been crucial to the development of the literary scene. He speaks to Hana R. Alberts about a present full of books and the future of reading.
I grew up in western Massachusetts. That was a pretty idyllic existence. What do you do when you grow up in the countryside? You go to local high school and you play baseball in the afternoons and on weekends.
“War and Peace” [is probably my favorite book] and the reason is that it was the first piece of major literature I read. I must have been about 14, and that got me hooked.
Because my father was a professor he was able to take sabbaticals, so I spent two years in England and a year and a half in South America, which gave me some appetite for living overseas.
I ended up in the computer business.
There was something in Hong Kong, and I said, “Okay!” I pretty much got on the next plane and never went back. A common story.
The route to being in books was circuitous. The internet was happening, so we did Paddyfield, the e-commerce bookseller, in 1999. It wasn’t the first e-commerce firm, but there weren’t many. It still exists.