“We wanted to celebrate how people are surviving and thriving in difficult times, while also acknowledging the toll they have taken,” Platt says. “Mental health is a perfect theme for a literary festival, because of the healing power of stories, both telling our own and hearing or reading those of others.”

Evan Osnos, The New Yorker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on Asia and the Middle East, has turned his eagle eyes towards America to examine the evolution of political anger between September 11, 2001, and the storming of the US Capitol earlier this year.

With conversations ranging from Italian crime fiction to K-pop, improving your poker game to family dynamics, there is a writer somewhere, at some time, to suit every palate. “We have approached the Rebound theme from different angles, from books about lockdown and work-life balance to those that celebrate food, wine, humour, the natural world and heritage,” says Platt.

Not everything is business as usual, however. Fifty-five events can be attended in person and 37 can be viewed online, the continued uncertainty surrounding international travel dashing hopes of bringing writers to Hong Kong.

HKILF has responded to the pandemic in other ways. One panel will debate the costs and benefits of Hong Kong’s controversial 21-day quarantine, currently the longest in the world.

This fits neatly into a broader series exploring a range of mental-health issues. The programme begins with bibliotherapists Germaine Leece and Sonya Tsakalakis promoting the therapeutic properties of reading, and recommending books for every emotion.

Then there’s acclaimed British writer Horatio Clare, who will be speaking about his memoir Heavy Light, an unflinching account of his mental breakdown, treatment in a psychiatric hospital and subsequent recovery.

Journalist Lucy Kellaway has also written a memoir, Re-Educated, about her own life-changing period. Kellaway was in her 50s when she traded in a successful career in journalism to retrain as a schoolteacher, a shift that coincided with a series of similarly profound decisions.

The impact of Britain’s imperial past on its present is the subject of a fascinating meeting of minds between journalist Sathnam Sanghera and playwright, novelist and essayist Caryl Phillips. And Australian-based authors Alice Pung and Emily Maguire will compare notes on writing novels about family breakdown.

If this all sounds a little too heavyweight for these already heavyweight times, some culinary consolation is served in two food-and-drink related events.

Hetty McKinnon, founder of Sydney’s Arthur Street Kitchen, talks about her book To Asia, With Love, a fusion of recipes and anecdotes paying homage to the cooking she learned from her Cantonese mother. Master of wine Jeannie Cho Lee, whose particular expertise is burgundy, leads an evening of tasting and teaching as she explores the history of these wines, and their appeal for the Chinese market.

These cultural fusions fit neatly into another festival theme, titled Perspectives. “While it’s still hard to travel physically, books are a great way to broaden our horizons about both local and international issues,” Platt says. She mentions Italian journalist Francesca Borri appearing live from Afghanistan to report on the situation there, and also Char Kwok’s Hong Kong Dictionary, which documents the colourful, multilayered phrases of Cantonese.

As this last recommendation suggests, the HKILF might roam far and wide, but its heart remains in Hong Kong.

“Hong Kong readers have very cosmo­politan and wide-ranging tastes,” says Platt. “People are always interested in topics close to home and we have some brilliant local authors and speakers looking at different periods of Hong Kong’s history – from Kit Fan’s novel set in Diamond Hill in the mid-1980s to non-fiction, including Les Bird’s documentation of the Vietnamese boatpeople.”

Highlights include the Peel Street Poets’ annual slam and the launch of the 17th English-language anthology by the Hong Kong Writers Circle.

You can also discover new literary voices and hear established authors – Michael O’Sullivan, Collier Nogues, Florence Ng and Karen Cheung – talk about the impact of the pandemic on their poetry, prose, fiction and memoir.

Among the more innovative initiatives are three walking tours around Hong Kong that feel like literal and metaphorical breaths of fresh air.

Eighty years after the Battle for Hong Kong, Philip Cracknell will not only talk about his new history of the conflict, but also guide festivalgoers around the historic sites that witnessed fierce fighting between Japanese and Allied armies in December 1941.

In her Sunset Survivors tour, Lindsay Varty uncovers Hong Kong’s unheralded artisans who helped make the city what it is today. Expect eye-opening visits to tea-houses, dried-fish sellers, makers of bamboo steamers and cheongsam tailors.

Finally, Adam Francis (author of A Field Guide to the Snakes of Hong Kong) introduces adults and children alike to Hong Kong’s rich wildlife. Top of his list are the snakes that slither through the New Territories.

And these are only a fraction of the offerings. When I ask Platt which events she most wants to attend at this year’s festival, she says that is impossible to answer. If pressed, she hopes Galgut will appear as the newly crowned Booker winner. And having just emerged from her own third hotel quarantine, she has a personal interest in the panel on Hong Kong’s 21-day lockdown.

But more than anything, she hopes the festival will bring “more attention to emerging local writers, such as Alice Chan, Hannah Bent, Angus Lee, Virginia Ng Suk-yin and Yuen Shan, and help them find support and opportunities to develop”.

For information on the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, to be held from November 5 to 15, visit festival.org.hk.