https://www.scmp.com/rss/16342/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com In The Seventh Day we meet narrator Yang Fei in the land of the dead. Yang is a 41-year-old Mr Average: a man with no children, little money and few prospects. He leaves his bedsit and walks aimlessly "in the barren and murky city". It is the first day of his death. But with no one to bury him, and no one to mourn him, he is consigned to a restless state roaming among the spirits of the fallen. During Yang's seven days of wandering, he meets the other people in his life who have also died and,... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1729241/seventh-day-yu-hua-grim-satire-chinas-poor?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1729241/seventh-day-yu-hua-grim-satire-chinas-poor?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 04 Mar 2015 05:30:30 +0000 In 1985 the top-ranking Chinese spy Larry Chin Wu-tai was captured by the FBI. Chin was a gambler, a slumlord and a womaniser. He was also the CIA's most valued linguist and had worked for the intelligence unit for 30 years. On the day of sentencing, prison guards found Chin in his cell, dead, a plastic trash bag tied around his head which had been sealed with his shoelaces. He had apparently committed suicide. "How can you forget that?" asks author Ha Jin who, nearly three decades after the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1650735/author-ha-jins-exile-us-helped-him-understand-spy-protagonist-his?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1650735/author-ha-jins-exile-us-helped-him-understand-spy-protagonist-his?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Nov 2014 12:30:15 +0000 Confrontation: A Conversation with Aude Lancelin by Alain Badiou and Alain Finkielkraut Polity Alain Badiou and Alain Finkielkraut are French philosophers with opposing visions. Indeed, their extensive differences are brought together by one thing alone: both are courageous thinkers unafraid to stand up and say what they think despite the prevailing intellectual fashions of the time. In 2009, journalist Aude Lancelin organised a discussion between the pair. Despite the lack of a "happy... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1581699/book-review-confrontation-alain-badiou-and-alain-finkielkraut?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1581699/book-review-confrontation-alain-badiou-and-alain-finkielkraut?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Aug 2014 14:12:56 +0000 Controversies by Alain Badiou and Jean-Claude Milner Polity In 2000, two of France's most important intellectual thinkers broke off relations. Alain Badiou and Jean-Claude Milner first met in 1967 during the "Red Years" in Paris when the former was a Lycée teacher and the latter had just returned from the MIT. Both were ardent Maoists. But as their careers in philosophy soared, their relations soured. Eventually they stopped talking altogether. Until 2012 when Philippe Petit asked the two... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1579138/book-review-controversies-alain-badiou-and-jean-claude-milner?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1579138/book-review-controversies-alain-badiou-and-jean-claude-milner?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Aug 2014 23:45:45 +0000 Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen (translated by Eric Abrahamsen) Two Lines Press  4 stars When rakish 25-year-old Dunhuang is released from prison, he is assaulted - by a dust devil. The polluted air fills his eyes, nose and mouth with fine grit, forcing him to sneeze and spit. The outside world - where sandstorms rage, shrouding the sun - is as bleak and inhospitable as life inside. Storms, and the suffocating Beijing dust, appear time and again in Running Through Beijing, Xu Zechen's... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1541658/novel-explores-lives-beijings-unnoticed-street-hawkers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1541658/novel-explores-lives-beijings-unnoticed-street-hawkers?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Jun 2014 04:15:30 +0000 The Mirror of Love by Joachim Chu Chee-kong World Scientific 1 star Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore "What has gone wrong with marriage?" Hong Kong businessman turned author Joachim Chu Chee-kong was inspired to explore the subject after witnessing marital failures and broken families among his friends. Today's societal turmoil, as he sees it, stands in stark contrast to the better days of his 1950s childhood when contraception was seen as "unnatural", divorce "exceptional", and abortion an... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1531578/book-review-mirror-love-joachim-chu-chee-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1531578/book-review-mirror-love-joachim-chu-chee-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Jun 2014 03:52:47 +0000 Raymond Zhou, China's best-known film critic, has covered the mainland's film industry for 15 years. The author recently released a new book, A Practical Guide to Chinese Cinema 2002-2012 , which delves into the burgeoning film market. He talks to Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore China's film criticism industry is marred by corruption, including the blackballing by film companies of critics who write bad reviews, and the common practice of giving out (red packets) to reviewers. I have made it a habit... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1374499/top-critic-rates-state-mainlands-film-industry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1374499/top-critic-rates-state-mainlands-film-industry?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Dec 2013 07:55:59 +0000 Goldfish by Jennifer Wong Chameleon Press 3 stars Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore Goldfish is a random name for a poetry collection that delves deep into Chinese culture. But perhaps random is the best word to describe this eclectic - and vast - group of poems, written by Hong Kong poet Jennifer Wong. Wong studied English literature at Oxford University and her debut collection, Summer Cicadas, published in 2006, looked into issues of identity and was largely focused on her experiences in England.... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1304768/goldfish-jennifer-wong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1304768/goldfish-jennifer-wong?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Californian author and former Hollywood executive Lisa Brackmann, 54, has just published her second thriller set in China. In Hour of the Rat , a sequel to the acclaimed Rock Paper Tiger (2010), we again meet Ellie McEnroe, a 27-year-old former National Guard medic and Iraq war vet who is bumming around Beijing. Ellie is asked by an old flame to find his missing brother, an eco-terrorist hiding out in rural China. As she follows a labyrinth of clues around the country, she finds herself pursued... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1293836/china-knowledge-central-thriller-series-appeal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1293836/china-knowledge-central-thriller-series-appeal?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000 "The place is very rock'n'roll," Ben Ben says, gazing out from behind her page-boy fringe at the smoky dive club where she is about to perform. It is a Friday night in Beijing and the Mao Livehouse is packed with fans. Here, graffiti is etched onto the red walls. The floor is sticky with spilt beer and the toilet is blocked. Ben Ben, the Taiwanese lead singer of Beijing-based shoegazing band Skip Skip Ben Ben, is selling kitsch T-shirts before her set begins. "Beijing is the perfect place to... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1239785/making-noise-intrinsic-protest-rock-bands-beijing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/article/1239785/making-noise-intrinsic-protest-rock-bands-beijing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 May 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Giant Pandas: Born Survivors by Zhang Zhihe and Sarah M. Bexell Penguin   Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore Giant Pandas is a coffee-table book with a serious message. Giant pandas, we are told time and again, are more than cute mammals worthy of our adoration. Beyond their chubby cheeks, rotund bodies, and black-and-white fur coats, they are wild animals facing extinction. Born Survivors aims to educate readers on the real panda. In doing so, it hopes to move the public to become partakers in... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1105359/book-review-giant-pandas?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1105359/book-review-giant-pandas?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 City at the End of Time by Leung Ping-kwan HKU Press   Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore City at the End of Time, a collection of bilingual poems by Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-kwan, was first published in 1992 when the upcoming 1997 handover loomed large over the works and how they were interpreted. Today, readers of this new edition can view the poems with the benefit of historical hindsight. Yet, despite 15 years having passed since Hong Kong was handed back to China, Leung's insights remain... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1031466/reissue-pre-1997-poetry-collection-still-has-much-relevance-today?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1031466/reissue-pre-1997-poetry-collection-still-has-much-relevance-today?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Sep 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Perceptions by Gillian Bickley Proverse Hong Kong Taking her readers on a journey from Hong Kong to Albania and beyond, Perceptions covers three decades of writing from British-born poet Gillian Bickley, who has lived here since the 1970s. Bickley's fifth poetry collection does not deliver one single message. The book is divided into sections, each with poems loosely collected together under different themes. Stretching over years of her life, and spanning different continents, these include... https://www.scmp.com/article/1004187/perceptions?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1004187/perceptions?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Chamber choirs have an enduring image in popular culture - and it's not a flattering one. 'When people think of a choir, they think of stuffy singers standing up and holding their hands in front of them singing 'la la la',' says conductor, musicologist and Hong Kong Baptist University professor John Winzenburg. Winzenburg has made it his mission to prove them wrong. This month, the university's Cantoria Hong Kong chamber choir will perform 'New Sounds in Choral Music of China & the World' at... https://www.scmp.com/article/1003458/folk-wisdom?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1003458/folk-wisdom?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Chamber choirs have an enduring image in popular culture - and it's not a flattering one. 'When people think of a choir, they think of stuffy singers standing up and holding their hands in front of them singing 'la la la',' says conductor, musicologist and Hong Kong Baptist University professor John Winzenburg. Winzenburg has made it his mission to prove them wrong. This month, the university's Cantoria Hong Kong chamber choir will perform 'New Sounds in Choral Music of China & the World' at... https://www.scmp.com/article/1003461/folk-wisdom?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1003461/folk-wisdom?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Shanghai-born crime writer and poet Qiu Xiaolong created the best-selling Inspector Chen detective series. Qiu, 59, won the Anthony Award for best new novel in 2001 with Death of a Red Heroine, which was declared one of the five best political novels of all time by The Wall Street Journal. Qiu spoke to Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore after his seventh Inspector Chen novel, Don't Cry, Tai Lake, was published this month. You write in English. Why? I used to write in Chinese and I still write a... https://www.scmp.com/article/1001393/rhyme-and-reason-how-crime-writer-found-poetic-justice?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1001393/rhyme-and-reason-how-crime-writer-found-poetic-justice?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Eileen Chang: Romancing Languages, Cultures and Genres edited by Kam Louie HKU Press In 2007, Chinese writer Eileen Chang was thrust into the Western consciousness by Ang Lee's film adaptation of her short story Lust, Caution. The raunchy tale of spies, sex, love and betrayal in Japanese-occupied Shanghai was a worldwide hit. And Chang - who first published the story in the 1970s - became a household name. Despite this, Chang (who died in Los Angeles in 1995) remains somewhat of a mystery... https://www.scmp.com/article/1001444/eileen-chang-romancing-languages-cultures-and-genres?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1001444/eileen-chang-romancing-languages-cultures-and-genres?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Old Beijing: Postcards from the Imperial City by Felicitas Titus Tuttle Publishing With the advent of the internet, postcards now seem redundant. We Tweet our impressions, Instagram our photos, and track our travels on a timeline on Facebook. The humble postcard is a quaint relic from yesteryear. Still, postcards provide a window into foreign lands - and, crucially, provide a view into how those places are perceived by outsiders: produced, packaged, and sold within a single image. Now a new book... https://www.scmp.com/article/1000843/past-card?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1000843/past-card?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 What is The Little Red Guard about? This story centres on my grandmother and her coffin. In fact, it is a story about my father, who spent the better part of his life trying to fulfil his mother's last wish of having a traditional burial. What made you tell this story? In 1988, my father died of lung cancer at the age of 58. At his funeral, I was asked to say a few words on behalf of the family after the party secretary's eulogy. I was young and arrogant. I found it hard to deliver a talk... https://www.scmp.com/article/1000210/belated-thank-you-fathers-sacrifice?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1000210/belated-thank-you-fathers-sacrifice?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 How did you first become a writer? In the beginning I just wrote for fun online - I didn't take it seriously. Then people liked what I wrote, I was approached by publishers, and here we are. You published your first short story Goodbye Vivian [translated as Goodbye An in The Road of Others] online in 1998, well before internet writing had taken off. Why did you decide to write online? For pleasure, to kill time, to grow a hobby and to express my thoughts and emotions. It was rare back then for... https://www.scmp.com/article/999541/pioneering-online-writer-moves-beyond-medium?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/999541/pioneering-online-writer-moves-beyond-medium?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 The countdown online was ominous. 'Ten days until real-name registration,' read a post from a Sina Weibo user nicknamed 'Linzongwei Piyan', which translates into an expletive. Microbloggers had for months been uneasy about the central gov-ernment's plan, announced in December, to have millions of users register their names and mobile numbers on March 16. Anonymous users would have to reveal their identities - or stop posting. '[Scholar] Qian Zhongshu once said: 'Is it necessary for one to know... https://www.scmp.com/article/997643/ruffling-feathers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/997643/ruffling-feathers?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 In 2005, while living as a student in Hong Kong, I had a conversation with a classmate that betrayed the deep tensions between residents of the former colony and their cousins up north. Over coffee with the Hongkonger, I mentioned plans to travel to the mainland. A pause. 'Be careful,' the girl warned ominously. The mainland, she relayed with a knowing nod, was not only filthy but full of thieves. I was puzzled. Dirty? Maybe. Unsafe? Rarely. Had she ever visited? No, she replied. Why would she... https://www.scmp.com/article/993004/pride-and-prejudice?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/993004/pride-and-prejudice?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:00:00 +0000 China in Ten Words by Yu Hua (translated by Allan Barr) Pantheon In 2009 Yu Hua wrote a piece in The New York Times to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Yu used the politically loaded word renmin ('the people') as a prism through which to view the uprising. Party leaders continually pay lip service to a collective communist ideal of 'the people'. Yet here, renmin was used to ponder a very different kind of people-power. The piece became the... https://www.scmp.com/article/989509/china-ten-words?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/989509/china-ten-words?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Two weeks ago I spent a few nights at Tokyo's Park Hyatt hotel - famous for the scene in Lost in Translation where a lonesome Bill Murray nurses a drink looking over the twinkling lights of the city below. I visited during a crisp November when the daytime vistas from the 52nd floor were drenched in blue skies and sunshine. The view stretched over myriad skyscrapers and Meiji Park, smoke wafting from the Meiji Temple, to the sea beyond. Landing back in Beijing last Saturday came as a shock. I... https://www.scmp.com/article/988026/blessed-are-mask-makers?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/988026/blessed-are-mask-makers?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000 A population drugged by a brutal regime into losing their memories of a bloody government crackdown. A village decimated by a mysterious 'fever'. A Chinese Christmas tale of a retired schoolteacher who mourns the death of his daughter while pimping young girls to a seedy brothel for a quick buck. These are just three of the story-lines to emerge from Chinese writers in translation this year. They range from Chan Koon-chung's futuristic Orwellian novel The Fat Years to Yan Lianke's Dream of... https://www.scmp.com/article/988010/fictions-great-leap-forward?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/988010/fictions-great-leap-forward?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future by Tom Scocca Riverhead Books Beijing is a city made up of three parts: 'the moneyed artificial one, the wretched and broken one, the live and bustling one', muses Tom Scocca in Beijing Welcomes You, his debut book. To illustrate these jostling contradictions, Scocca - an American journalist who arrived in Beijing in 2004 and lived there on and off until 2010 - zooms in for a close-up inspection of the build-up to the Beijing... https://www.scmp.com/article/985308/beijing-welcomes-you-unveiling-capital-city-future?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/985308/beijing-welcomes-you-unveiling-capital-city-future?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The Magician of 1919 by Li Er translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz Make-Do Publishing In Li Er's short story Christmas Eve a retired schoolteacher mourns the death of his daughter while simultaneously pimping young girls to an infamous nightclub-cum-brothel. The story is set on the night before Christmas. But unlike Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a transformative parable in which the greedy and frozen-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge rediscovers his morality after visits from the three... https://www.scmp.com/article/983317/lis-tale-portrays-moral-confusion-racking-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/983317/lis-tale-portrays-moral-confusion-racking-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Among the topics discussed at the annual Communist Party's Central Committee meeting this month were ways to cultivate 'soft' power and promote Chinese culture abroad. It is ironic, then, that Beijing's soft power has again been wielded with sledge-hammer subtly. For a country attempting to dictate its cultural might to the masses, the mainland performed a spectacular own goal with the sudden 'postponement' of the opera Dr Sun Yat-sen at the National Centre for the Performing Arts. The world... https://www.scmp.com/article/983273/art-impossible?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/983273/art-impossible?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Vice-Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Hong Kong last month was supposed to be a coup for the mainland. He came bearing a 'basket of gifts' (business opportunities) to boost the city's economy by tying it closer to that of the mainland. Carefully orchestrated tours of an old people's home and a public-housing estate were designed to demonstrate his common touch. Instead, the spotlight was stolen by protesters, students and journalists who were met with an aggressive police response. Mainland-style... https://www.scmp.com/article/980000/hk-addicted-causing-trouble?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/980000/hk-addicted-causing-trouble?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy Beautiful Books Simon Van Booy is a philosopher, essayist and acclaimed short story writer who, in 2009, won the prestigious Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for Love Begins in Winter. Now Van Booy has published his debut novel - and, as a haunting meditation on desire, death and renewal, it does not disappoint. Everything Beautiful Began After takes place in Athens, 'long a place where lonely people go'. Here, among the crumbled... https://www.scmp.com/article/979401/everything-beautiful-began-after?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/979401/everything-beautiful-began-after?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The leaders may be wringing their hands. The universities may be up in arms. But the students, at least, are not surprised. Last week, mainland papers were awash with the news that four of Beijing's top high-school scorers had rejected Beida (Peking University), the mainland's leading academic institution, in favour of the bright shores of Hong Kong. They are not alone. This summer, 291 mainland students enrolled in universities in Hong Kong, including 17 of the nation's best and brightest. The... https://www.scmp.com/article/974278/peking-us-dumplings-lose-their-appeal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/974278/peking-us-dumplings-lose-their-appeal?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The Fat Years by Chan Koonchung (translated by Michael Duke) Doubleday When I finished Chan Koonchung's The Fat Years, the most talked about novel translated from the Chinese this year, I was divided: is this a magnum opus or an ambitious piece of fiction that flounders? The Fat Years is a giddily daring vision of a dystopian China. Set in the year 2013 it depicts a disturbing future: one where citizens, guided by a sinister authoritarian party, casually exchange freedom in return for gluttonous... https://www.scmp.com/article/974319/fat-years?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/974319/fat-years?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000 There is a scene in The Foremost Good Fortune, Susan Conley's memoir about China, cancer and bringing up children, that best summarises the book. Conley is recovering in a hospital in Beijing from lumpectomy surgery. She has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Next door a small seven-year-old Chinese boy is screaming in his own private pain, surrounded by concerned family. Suddenly, an earsplitting sledge-hammering shakes the building. It's 2008. The sick be damned. China has Olympic... https://www.scmp.com/article/971694/coming-terms-two-big-cs-cancer-and-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/971694/coming-terms-two-big-cs-cancer-and-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 25 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000 If you can, try to ignore the cringing melodrama in A Beautiful Life, Hong Kong director Andrew Lau Wai-keung's first stab at romance and an abrupt departure from his famed Infernal Affairs triad trilogy. Admittedly, that's hard to do. The characters suffer ail- ments worthy more of an Old Testament plague than a rom-com-slash-drama: blindness, muteness and autism. Then there's the soulful, sad and suffering Beijing cop, Fang Zhendong (Liu Ye), the leading man, who develops premature dementia... https://www.scmp.com/article/970322/its-all-about-money-honey?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/970322/its-all-about-money-honey?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000 I made my first trip to Shanghai in 2003, a journey that involved a train, a bus and a boat down the Yangtze River from Kunming, Yunnan province. Shanghai seemed quaintly charming to an English teacher living in Fujian province, yet impossibly grand and intoxicating. Eight years on - aeons in the life of the rapidly expanding mainland - and the city, particularly the historic Bund, is even more spectacular, having been reborn in a former image. Take the Peace Hotel, which began life as the... https://www.scmp.com/article/739270/shanghai-swing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/739270/shanghai-swing?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards Viking HK$216 Kim Edwards' last novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, spent 122 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list, has been translated into 38 languages, and featured on that sure barometer for greatness, the TV show Richard & Judy. Fans then might be disappointed by Edwards' latest offering, The Lake of Dreams, a family saga that aims high but fails to excite. The Lake of Dreams has a promising start. It is spring and Lucy Jarrett, an... https://www.scmp.com/article/737140/lake-dreams?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/737140/lake-dreams?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000 An Eastern Saga: A Film Man's Memoir of a Lost Asia by Marvin Farkas Make-Do Publishing HK$165 Veteran news cameraman Marvin Farkas is somewhat of a legend in Hong Kong, where he first arrived in its harbour on April 16, 1954. The then 27-year-old was one of just four civilian passengers on the Eastern Saga. This cargo ship was the beginning of the author's life in Hong Kong and its rather poetic name lends itself fittingly to the title of his memoir. An Eastern Saga is a... https://www.scmp.com/article/735184/eastern-saga-film-mans-memoir-lost-asia?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/735184/eastern-saga-film-mans-memoir-lost-asia?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:00:00 +0000 To the End of the Land by David Grossman (translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen) Knopf, HK$221 In 2006, three years into writing To the End of the Land, David Grossman's 20-year-old son Uri died in the Second Lebanon War. In the epilogue to this grave and haunting work, Grossman writes that when he began the novel in 2003 he had a 'feeling - or rather, a wish - that the book I was writing would protect him'. The author failed to shelter his son; but his grief imbued his words with... https://www.scmp.com/article/729046/end-land?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/729046/end-land?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000