Books

Newly minted author Sonia Leung tells Kate Whitehead about life in a Diamond Hill slum, a devastating rape and how she finally followed her dream. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Raped at 14, she was haunted for years – now her dream has come true

Fresh from her talk at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, newly minted author Sonia Leung tells Kate Whitehead about life in a Diamond Hill slum, a devastating rape and how she finally followed her dream.

11 Mar 2024 - 7:15AM
Lucy Lord MBE, the founder and executive chair of Hong Kong mental health charity Mind HK and a decorated obstetrician, says that what she sees in Jane Austen’s Persuasion has grown with her stages of professional development. Photo: Mind HK

Which Jane Austen book changed this mental health charity founder’s life?

Lucy Lord MBE, a decorated obstetrician who is also the founder and executive chair of mental health charity Mind HK, reveals the Jane Austen book that she has read over and over again for 50 years.

7 Mar 2024 - 5:15PM
A Qing dynasty painting of a scene from Dream of the Red Chamber, a classic Chinese novel that changed the life of Hong Kong Arts Festival executive director Flora Yu. Photo: Getty Images

‘It helped to shape me’: Hong Kong Arts Festival director’s eye-opening read

Flora Yu, executive director of the Hong Kong Arts Festival, explains how the classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the world’s great works of literature, changed her life.

21 Feb 2024 - 5:35PM
Illustration: Victor Sanjinez Garcia

Book extract: new thinking about Marco Polo’s China travels, often doubted

With his outlandish stories of the East, Marco Polo has always drawn scepticism. But historian and author Christopher Harding’s latest book makes the intrepid Venetian’s travels harder to doubt.

28 Jan 2024 - 9:00AM
A representation of French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) for his 1857 book “Les Fleurs du Mal” (“The Flowers of Evil”). Photo: Getty Images

‘Thrill of the forbidden’: Charles Baudelaire’s dark, taboo-busting poetry

Nicolas Chow, chairman for Asia and worldwide head of Asian art at Sotheby’s, explains how French poet Charles Baudelaire’s book Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) changed his life.

17 Jan 2024 - 5:15PM
Elon Musk (the book) was written by a bona fide big-deal biographer: Walter Isaacson.

Best books of 2023 – with a twist – from Elon Musk biography to Yellow Face

From an Elon Musk biography and Prince Harry’s Spare to Yellow Face and Hong Kong poetry, Post Magazine’s round-up of 2023’s best books takes as its theme the Cambridge Dictionary word of the year, hallucinate.

4 Jan 2024 - 2:36PM
Christine Chow, co-founder and creative director of Hong Kong sustainable fashion label Tove & Libra, says F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first book “This Side of Paradise” had “such an effect on me”. Photo: Tove & Libra

How F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first book changed fashion label founder’s life

Christine Chow, co-founder and creative director of Hong Kong sustainable fashion label Tove & Libra, explains the impact F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first book ‘This Side of Paradise’ had on her young self.

15 Dec 2023 - 5:15PM
A traditional Kazakh eagle hunter in Ulgii, Western Mongolia, watches her mobile phone with her golden eagle, which she uses to hunt foxes and rabbits for their fur. Broadband internet is helping preserve nomadic culture on the Mongolian steppe. Photo: Getty Images

Mobile internet meets nomad tradition on the Mongolian steppe

With the lifestyle of nomads on the Mongolian steppe under threat, many are embracing the mobile internet to stay connected and ease their labour without giving up the best of their traditional ways.

9 Dec 2023 - 12:07PM
Greta Garbo and Fredric March in MGM’s film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s 19th century novel, the literary classic “Anna Karenina”. Photo: Getty Images

‘Exceed expectations, you’re not always rewarded’: Anna Karenina’s message

Reading Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy’s novel of ‘immense beauty’, taught Lynn Fung, director of a Hong Kong museum founded by her father, lessons about family dynamics and what others expect of you.

12 Oct 2023 - 5:55PM
Mapo dofu (sauteéd tofu in hot and spicy sauce) made by Fuchsia Dunlop. She wants diners to appreciate Chinese food better. Photo: SCMP

Why ordering a Chinese meal is ‘like a symphony’ for author Fuchsia Dunlop

Fuchsia Dunlop, award-winning cook and writer, wants people around the world to understand that when they eat Chinese food they are enjoying ‘a very sophisticated cuisine’. It’s the theme of her latest book.

1 Oct 2023 - 4:15PM
Laura Williamson, founder of Plantdays, a Hong Kong-based marketplace for female-owned, sustainable fashion, beauty and homeware brands, says we all interpret Shakespeare’s characters and meanings differently. Photo: Plantdays,

Why is this sustainable fashion marketplace founder rereading Shakespeare?

Laura Williamson, founder of Hong Kong-based sustainable fashion marketplace Plantdays, is going back over the complete works of Shakespeare because it ‘really forces you to think’.

29 Sep 2023 - 5:15PM
Lisa Lam, co-chair of the Gay Games Hong Kong, says she still returns to the Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese text, from time to time, especially when she feels stuck or unhappy. Photo: Lisa Lam Mun-wai

Chinese text that helped Gay Games Hong Kong co-chair embrace being a lesbian

Lisa Lam, co-chair of the Gay Games Hong Kong, says the Zhuangzi, a foundational work of Chinese philosophy and literature, gave her perspective on being a lesbian.

21 Sep 2023 - 5:15PM
Benoit Guenard, founder and director of the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum, at the University of Hong Kong’s Kadoorie Biological Sciences Building in 2021. He explains how botanist Francis Hallé‘s “In Praise of Plants” changed his life. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum founder on a challenge to how he saw nature

Benoit Guénard of the Hong Kong Biodiversity Museum explains how botanist Francis Hallé’s ‘In Praise of Plants’ made him realise we need to think in different ways for different species.

14 Sep 2023 - 5:15PM
Alicia Lui, founder of Women In Sports Empowered Hong Kong, says her life changed after reading The Diary of Ma Yan: the Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl (2002). Photo: Alicia Lui

‘She would not eat so she could buy a pen’: NGO founder on her inspiration

Alicia Lui, founder of Women In Sports Empowered Hong Kong, talks about how her life changed when she read the diary of a poor Chinese schoolgirl from a remote region of Ningxia.

7 Sep 2023 - 5:15PM
Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer of the gene-editing technology CRISPR, at the University of California Berkeley’s Li Ka Shing Center. Photo: Getty Images

Should we allow designer babies? Nobel laureate’s work troubles blind CEO

Chong Chan-yau, CEO of Hong Kong NGO CarbonCare InnoLab, who has been blind since he was six, talks about how a book about a CRISPR gene-editing pioneer changed his life.

9 Aug 2023 - 5:15PM
Palash Mitra, culinary director for South Asian cuisines at Hong Kong’s Black Sheep Restaurants, at the one-Michelin-star New Punjab Club, which he headed. Photo: Black Sheep

‘It’s not just a cookbook’: eye-opening tome on Indian royal cuisine

Palash Mitra, who gained a Michelin star when heading Hong Kong’s New Punjab Club, talks about how ‘Dining with the Nawabs’ goes deep into all aspects of Indian royal cuisine.

2 Aug 2023 - 5:15PM
John Le Carré, in 1974, the year he first visited Hong Kong with the idea of setting one of his Cold War spy novels in the East. The book that resulted, “The Honourable Schoolboy”, featured characters based on people he met there. Photo: Ben Martin/The LiFE Images Collection/Getty Images

John le Carré’s time in Hong Kong, and a detail about it that he got wrong

Characters the British writer met in Hong Kong made it into one of his Cold War spy novels, as did an error he admitted cribbing from an out-of-date guidebook and which taught him to get the small stuff right.

9 Jul 2023 - 7:45AM
Hong Kong-born Portuguese amateur historian Jose Maria “Jack” Braga as a young man. Photo: Instituto Cultural

Then & Now | A Hong Kong amateur historian dead 35 years but whose work still resonates

Hong Kong-born Portuguese scholar José Maria ‘Jack’ Braga was one of a group of amateur historians, including Austin Coates, whose spadework dug up unexpected riches for later authors to utilise.

3 Jul 2023 - 7:45AM
Simon Winchester, Milan, Italy, September 2018. Photo: Getty Images

Why British author Simon Winchester would sleep with one of his critics’ wives

British author and journalist Simon Winchester talks about his childhood beatings, being imprisoned during the Falklands war, missing Hong Kong and how one critic got under his skin.

3 Jul 2023 - 5:03AM
Zhang Chongren points to a poster of Chang Chong-chen, a character in Tintin book The Blue Lotus based on him, in Paris in 1985. The leading Chinese artist and Georges Remi, known as Hergé and author of the books, became firm friends after meeting in the 1930s. Photo: Getty Images

A Chinese artist made Tintin less racist, became one of Hergé’s best friends

The bond between the creator of beloved boy reporter Tintin and a prominent Chinese artist was a meeting of great minds.

5 Jul 2023 - 11:13AM