HONG KONG, 1995. Life is surreal, swift, out of control, as the city rushes towards that inevitable moment, the "handover" to China in 1997. Here are lives and loves in a changing world, chronicled by one of Hong Kong’s leading novelists.
Andanna Lee You Fun, a 20-something local girl and reluctant jazz musician, watches love fade but discovers new life as a Canto-pop singer. Gail Szeto, a senior financial executive and Eurasian single mother, wrestles with a difficult past through an uneasy present. Colleen Leyland-Tang, an American Sinophile and wife of a wealthy businessman, confronts her continued infidelities despite a "successful" marriage. Vince da Luca, a divorcing New York photographer, earns a lucrative living but few other comforts in his mid-life. The Unwalled City conjures an extraordinary feeling of place as it takes the reader into the lives of these four characters and the people around them.
Like the city itself, each of these native, and accidental, Hong Kong yan must leave behind the memory of what was in order to accept that which inevitably will be.
In The Unwalled City, her quiet, unostentatious prose ably evokes the tenor of life during these historical years. There is an urgency in the writing that does not race, that moves instead to the uncertain beat of the city itself. Resisting the urge to exoticize or "orientalize" the plot, characters or place, she has crafted a memorable tale of enduring power. Xu Xi's newest novel adds another gem to an accomplished body of work.
The Unwalled City, published in March 2001 by Chameleon Press
(ISBN 1387802140)
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