Nury Vittachi
Author, journalist and satirist Nury Vittachi co-founded the Asia Literary Review and the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. He tells Andrea Lo about coming to Hong Kong, his views on “Harry Potter” and the Asian literary scene, and shares stories from his days as an SCMP columnist.
I was born in Sri Lanka in 1958 when the civil war broke out. I was two or three when the civil war got worse and my family was targeted. We had to flee in the night.
My dad got this call from the chief of police, who said, “I’ve been ordered by the prime minister to arrest you—better make sure you’re not home.” My dad said, “Put your shoes on, children, we’re going out.”
The reason why we were thrown out was because my father wrote a column. I remember thinking, “Wow, dad wrote something in the newspapers and now we’re being chased by men with guns—this is so cool!”
In a sense, that influenced me and I thought: “I’m going to do what dad does—cause trouble.”
I came to Hong Kong on honeymoon 25 years ago and have been here ever since. The glamorous story is that we fell in love with this wonderful place. The real story is that we were in our 20s, we ran out of money, and we decided to get jobs. I was a gossip columnist at the SCMP.
The SCMP is a hilarious place to work. I was sacked several times.