Hong Kong in the Books
Don’t think Hong Kong is only a movie playground. The city is also at the centre of various novels and books, from love stories or childhood memories set against post-war backdrop, to illustration books capturing landscapes and people, as well as novels and guides about Hong Kong culture and (sometimes rude) language.
Whether you’re a resident or a curious visitor, these books should be in your basket!
The Ink Trail: Hong Kong by Andreas von Buddenbrock
Hong Kong Slang by Lindsay Varty and Iris Yim, illustrated by Amber Tsang
Did you ever feel like a chicken talking to a duck? Did you ever ask a girl out, only to be forced to eat lemons? Or maybe you’ve been told that you’re a peanut guy?
This little dictionary of classic, comical and sometimes rude Cantonese slang will help you get all the knowledge to survive in Hong Kong. With illustrations and translations, as well as English slang alternatives, the book is an hilarious celebration of the local culture.
Hong Kong Visual Culture: The M+ Guide
With more than 250 photographs and illustrations, and a specially commissioned cover by Hong Kong artist Don Mak, the guide features a journey through M+ Museum’s collection, telling the story of the city’s past and present through works of art and key landmarks.
From Cantopop and Zaha Hadid’s man-made polished granite mountain to iconic masterpieces of vernacular culture by the calligraphic artist ‘King of Kowloon’, this book celebrates the city’s modern and contemporary visual culture.
Diamond Hill by Kit Fan
Published in 2021, Hong Kong poet Kit Fan’s debut novel is set in the eponymous area of Diamond Hill in 1987. Budhha, a recovering heroin addict, moves into a Buddhist monastery and encounters an incongruous crew of characters, like a faded actress who calls herself Audrey Hepburn, the Iron Nun, former travel agent, or the teenage Boss, an iconoclastic gang leader.
A requiem for a disappearing city, the novel features the themes of colonialism, religion, memory, identity crisis and displacement with a darkly comic hand intertwined with Fan’s lyricism.
The World of Suzie Wong by Richard Mason
The book is the timeless love story between a British artist and a Chinese prostitute in the mid-1950s. First published in 1957, it resonated with readers worldwide, inspiring an eponymous movie starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan in 1960, the ballet Suzie Wong by Hong Kong Ballet in 2006, and even a reggae song by Jacob Miller in 1974.
Not only this novel is a charming bittersweet love story, but it is also evocative of the early post-war Hong Kong with British colonial rulers, American sailors and impoverished people.
Gweilo by Martin Booth
Published in 2004 and written from the point of view of a seven-year-old boy, the book is an evocative and funny autobiographical account of Martin Booth’s childhood in the 1950s.
As a child, Booth had free and unsupervised access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a “pale fellow” like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he travelled through small fishing villages in Sha Tin and settlements in Sheung Shu, he learned Cantonese, participated in colourful festivals and even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandering into the secret lair of the Triads and visiting an opium den.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee
Published in 2009, the book by Hong Kong-born Janice Y.K. Lee is both an historical and romantic narrative. In this sweeping tale of love and betrayal, Englishman Will Truesdale falls into a passionate relationship with Trudy during and after World War II in Hong Kong.
This international bestseller explores Hong Kong’s high society under colonial rule during two decades, interweaving stories of romance, loss and betrayal, and questioning what is love in different historical contexts.
The follow-up novel The Expatriates was adapted as a miniseries starring Nicole Kidman in 2024.
This is Hong Kong by Miroslav Sasek
First published in 1965 and reedited in 2007, the book captures the enchantment and contrasts of Hong Kong in the sixties, as seen by Czech author and illustrator Miroslav Sasek, best known for his series of books for children titled This Is…
Sasek shows the sweeping panorama of gleaming Kowloon Bay framed by misty mountain ridges, moves in for close-ups of labourers and hawkers, refugees from the mainland, and sailors of flame-red junks, as well as the “water people” who, it is said, never set foot on dry land.