|
|
Books Launched at the 2004 Festival
|
LITERATURE
|
 |
Wild Grass
Ian Johnson
RANDOM HOUSE
ISBN: 0375421866
Cloth, US$24.00
|
Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting on China for the Wall Street Journal, has found the small pockets of resistance that dot the vast landscape of Chinese society and may become the initial fissures that will someday bring down the seemingly indestructible façade of the Communist Party. In Wild Grass, he recounts the stories of three ordinary people who find themselves fighting oppression and government corruption, risking imprisonment and even
death. A young architecture student, a bereaved daughter, and a peasant legal clerk are the unlikely heroes of these stories, private citizens cast by unexpected circumstances into surprising roles.
|
 |
The Gangster We Are All Looking For
Le Thi Diem Thuy
PAN MACMILLAN
ISBN: 0330419838
Cloth, GBP12.99
|
In 1978, six Vietnamese refugees -- a girl, her father and four 'uncles' -- were pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego, California. In her new country, the little girl's matter-of-fact innocence masks the traumas that haunt her: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland; he memory of her brother who drowned; and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage. In her imagination, the new world of itchy dresses and rundown apartment blocks is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything with an unbearable intensity, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects and waits for her mother to join her. In a momentous literary debt, Thuy Le has revealed a world of great beauty and enormous sorrows. The Gangster We Are All Looking For is an authentically original novel about trying to find a place –- and voice –- in a new world.
|
 |
The Spice Garden
Michael Vatikiotis
EQUINOX PUBLISHING
ISBN: 9799796423
Paper, HK$119
|
From one of the most experienced journalists in Asia comes a novel about the roots of terror.
In The Spice Garden, Michael Vatikiotis explores the behaviour and innermost feelings of people caught in vicious religious conflict on a small island in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku. On an isolated speck once well-known for its fragrant spice, Christian and Muslim neighbours fall on each other in frenzy of hate and murder. Traditions of tolerance dissolve. Religious faith offers a fortress to hide behind and becomes a weapon. The urge to take revenge becomes such a natural compulsion, and resisting it seems like holding back a sneeze.
|
 |
Hong Kong Rose
Xu Xi
CHAMELEON PRESS
ISBN: 9889706059
paper, HK$70
|
A new edition of the bestselling novel from one of Hong Kong's leading English-language novelists. Set against the Asian and international airline world, Hong Kong Rose rewinds through a drama set in Hong Kong of the 1970s. Courage, cowardice and compromise weave through this tale of love, and lust, unrequited and transformed, in two of the world's great cities.
"Hong Kong Rose explores the lives of those in-between—between the city's Chinese and English speaking milieus, between continents, and, for a Chinese gay man shaped by older social customs, between a female wife and a male 'mistress'. It depicts Hong Kong from an unusual angle and follows the journey of some of its inhabitants in Xu Xi's well-honed prose." -— Evans Chan, critic/filmmaker
|
 |
Raincheck Renewed
Kavita Kindal
CHAMELEON PRESS
ISBN: 9889706083
Paper, HK$65
|
A new collection of poetry from Hong Kong poet Kavita Jindal.
"In Raincheck Renewed, the social role leads to the satirical and the female role leads to the feminist... But whether frustrated by high society or rebelling against imposed roles, she has realised her own strength and knows her promise." -- Mani Rao
|
 |
Clearing Ground
Martin Alexander
CHAMELEON PRESS
ISBN: 9889706091
paper, HK$99
|
"Poetry hunted down and pinned to the page" -- Romesh Gunesekera, author of Heaven's Edge and the Booker shortlisted Reef.
In his first collection of poems, Martin Alexander shares the sense of home and occasional displacement felt by many who choose to live in Hong Kong, a place hovering between languages and cultures on China's margins.
|
|
CRITICISM
|
 |
Tsui Hark’s Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain
Andrew Schroeder
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS
ISBN: 9622096514
Paper, HK$120
|
Hong Kong cinema exploded into world culture during the 1990s, driven by its linkage with Hollywood’s dynamic new digital special effects technologies. This book provides essential historical background to that remarkable set of events by analyzing the culture, political and technological network surrounding Tsui Hark’s masterful but under-appreciated Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain.
Schroeder examines how the film transformed Hong Kong action cinema from the 1980s to the present, which resulted in its rise as a dominant transnational style in close affiliation with the transformation of Hollywood cinema into a digital technology driven global enterprise.
|
 |
John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow
Karen Fang
HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS
ISBN: 9622096522
Paper, HK$120
|
A Better Tomorrow has always been hailed as a milestone in Hong Kong cinema. This book describes the different responses to the movie in Hong Kong and later in its reception worldwide, which paved the way for the promotion of John Woo and Chow Yun-fat to their current prominence in Hollywood.
Fang examines the different notions of the genre of action cinema in Asian and Western film industries. She tracks the connections between ying shung pian, or "hero" movie, the term by which Woo's film became famous in Hong Kong, and the spectacle of violence emphasized in the term "heroic bloodshed", the category in which the film was known in the West. Finally, she concludes with a discussion of the status of the film and its huge success in the current globalized industry.
|
|
CHILDREN'S
|
 |
One is a Drummer
Roseanne Thong
CHRONICLE BOOKS
ISBN: 0811837726
Cloth, US$14.95
|
This lively concept book shows that the world around us is filled with things to count. Three are the dim sum carts filled with yummy treats, eight are the candles on a birthday cake, and ten are the bamboo stalks growing in a garden. Many of the featured objects are Asian in origin, but all are universal in appeal. With brilliantly colored illustrations, an ear-pleasing text and an informative glossary, this truly multicultural book will make counting a fun part of every child's day!
|
Web site developed and hosted by Paddyfield.com, Hong Kong's online bookseller
Web site imagery and graphics developed by Enterprise IG
© 2004, Hong Kong International Literary Festival Ltd. All rights reserved.
|
