Xu Xi's newest novel, published in March 2001, adds another gem to an accomplished body of work. The Unwalled City takes place oin the Hong Kong of 1995, where life is surreal, swift, out of control, as the city rushes towards that inevitable moment, the "handover" to China.
Hong Kong stories written and published over the last thirty years, this book has been long in the making.
- One of Hong Kong’s most prominent writers, does it again. Recounting the past in today’s voice, her stories showcase the tension between East-West relationships, providing a compelling 'history between the sheets.'" Hwee Hwee Tan, author of Foreign Bodies.
The book is dedicated to "my English sea goddess Susie and in memory of Yang Yi Lung (John Young) historian, writer and friend."
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"Writes of people living between places, between loves, between histories. In her stories, you usually find someone you seem to know." Agnes Lam, poet Woman to Woman
- "Seems to know everybody’s secrets, and she writes about them with compassion, grace, and ultimate cool. Her characters all have smoldering inner lives and are frequently ingenious in how they go about getting themselves into, and out of the terrible traps that life can lay for us all. Someday soon, people are going to ‘discover’ Xu Xi, only to discover also they have a lot of catching up to do. She's a literary marvel." Robert H. Abel, author of Riding The Tiger, Ghost Traps, and other books
From a crumbling perch with a view of the Statue of Liberty, Rose Kho, Hong Kong girl who made it, lost it, and may be about to make it or lose it again, reflects, scotch in hand, on a life that "like an Indonesian mosquito disrupting my Chinese sleep" has controls of its own. Or, like a wounded fighter plane of the type her father used to fly, no controls at all. Xu Xi, the gifted, uncompromising storyteller, gives us a Hong Kong that sheds its artifice as a snake sheds its skin, only to grow new artifice. In Hong Kong Rose, petals metamorphose into scales that shine like mirror glass windows, reflecting equally the courage, cowardice and compromise of one of the world's great cities.
Read more about Hong Kong Rose, published by Asia2000
"Your name or your person, Which is dearer?" In answer to Lao Tzu's ancient question, Daughters of Hui offers four stories about bright, young Hong Kong women. All share the surname Hui. All share at least a casual connection with Boston. And all share that particular Hong Kong world view, one that roots into a past not well understood while reaching out to a future that "speaks too many languages".
Who are these women? And who are the men who so often fail them? Xu Xi's world knows no boundaries except those of the heart. But those are sometimes so impermeable that only nomadic wanderings can stave off the loneliness. These daughters of Hui are the antithesis of the exotic Asian heroines of so much Western fiction. They drive toll ways and pick up strangers. They fight the ghosts of a hundred generations with divorce lawyers. And even in their suicides, they are self-possessed: "Just a body in a hotel room, with the exact cash payment on the dresser next to the hotel bill you had asked for the night before. And my phone number on the envelope of that three-line note."
Read more about Daughters of Hui, published by Asia2000
Return to Xu Xi's home page.