As I See It

It’s not easy to find novels that are set in Hong Kong. Among the handful of English language novels that feature the city, most use it as a mere exotic detour and read like another The World of Susie Wong . What’s surprising, however, is that there is an equal dearth of Chinese language novels that use Hong Kong as their backdrop. Only Love in a Fallen City  «傾城之戀» and Lust, Caution «色,戒» by Shanghai-born writer Eileen Chang (張愛玲) come to mind. But both of them were written over three decades ago and set in the 1940s when the former British colony was under Japanese occupation. With so few fiction titles getting published in Hong Kong these days, the city’s quirky culture remains largely untapped by the local literati. Ghost of Memory That’s why Ghosts of Memory «回憶幽靈» by Vincent Mak (麥華嵩) is a welcome addition to the genre. Ghosts is Vincent’s fourth publication and his first full-length novel. The book comprises eight chapters of crisscrossing story lines set in ei...