Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories

Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories PDF Author: Xu XI
Publisher: Typhoon Media Limited
ISBN: 9789887794868
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Sometimes what is remembered is best forgotten. This is the feeling that permeates Insignificance. The protagonists in these stories cannot help but recall their former Hong Kong existence, one that shimmers with beauty and pain. On September 26, 2014, the occupation of three districts in Hong Kong -- known as the Umbrella Revolution -- began, shutting down traffic on several of the city's major thoroughfares. It was broadly a protest against the continued encroachment upon freedoms in this Chinese city, a city that is still not yet quite "China." The occupation lasted till December 15, 2014, and was quashed almost as quickly as it began. Subsequent protests are routinely silenced by Hong Kong's and China's governing elites. Will Hong Kong be reduced to an insignificance that denies its British colonial genesis and decries its Chinese Special Administrative Regional reality? Does Hong Kong's future look like its past, or is nostalgia a dangerous indulgence? Who will shed tears for the city it could or should become? These stories are among Xu Xi's most pointed, powerful work, as characters try to find their way forward in a familiar city they no longer recognize.

Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories

Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories PDF Author: Xu XI
Publisher: Typhoon Media Limited
ISBN: 9789887794868
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 188

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sometimes what is remembered is best forgotten. This is the feeling that permeates Insignificance. The protagonists in these stories cannot help but recall their former Hong Kong existence, one that shimmers with beauty and pain. On September 26, 2014, the occupation of three districts in Hong Kong -- known as the Umbrella Revolution -- began, shutting down traffic on several of the city's major thoroughfares. It was broadly a protest against the continued encroachment upon freedoms in this Chinese city, a city that is still not yet quite "China." The occupation lasted till December 15, 2014, and was quashed almost as quickly as it began. Subsequent protests are routinely silenced by Hong Kong's and China's governing elites. Will Hong Kong be reduced to an insignificance that denies its British colonial genesis and decries its Chinese Special Administrative Regional reality? Does Hong Kong's future look like its past, or is nostalgia a dangerous indulgence? Who will shed tears for the city it could or should become? These stories are among Xu Xi's most pointed, powerful work, as characters try to find their way forward in a familiar city they no longer recognize.

Love in a Fallen City

Love in a Fallen City PDF Author: Eileen Chang
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681372444
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Masterful short works about passion, family, and human relationships by one of the greatest writers of 20th century China. A New York Review Books Original “[A] giant of modern Chinese literature” –The New York Times "With language as sharp as a knife edge, Eileen Chang cut open a huge divide in Chinese culture, between the classical patriarchy and our troubled modernity. She was one of the very few able truly to connect that divide, just as her heroines often disappeared inside it. She is the fallen angel of Chinese literature, and now, with these excellent new translations, English readers can discover why she is so revered by Chinese readers everywhere." –Ang Lee Eileen Chang is one of the great writers of twentieth-century China, where she enjoys a passionate following both on the mainland and in Taiwan. At the heart of Chang’s achievement is her short fiction—tales of love, longing, and the shifting and endlessly treacherous shoals of family life. Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature. Love in a Fallen City, the first collection in English of this dazzling body of work, introduces American readers to the stark and glamorous vision of a modern master.

History's Fiction

History's Fiction PDF Author: Xu Xi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789889706128
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the turbulent sixties through the nineties, here is a "history" of Hong Kong, told through fiction by one of Hong Kong's top writers. Written over the past thirty years, these stories represent the evolution and shaping of a voice, as she strives to create art out of her birthplace, "the city that remains my perpetual concern." Here are portraits of Hong Kong, painted with compassion and love against the backdrop of historical events.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories PDF Author: Jay Rubin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 014139563X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
This fantastically varied and exciting collection celebrates the great Japanese short story, from its modern origins in the nineteenth century to the remarkable works being written today. Short story writers already well-known to English-language readers are all included here - Tanizaki, Akutagawa, Murakami, Mishima, Kawabata - but also many surprising new finds. From Yuko Tsushima's 'Flames' to Yuten Sawanishi's 'Filling Up with Sugar', from Shin'ichi Hoshi's 'Shoulder-Top Secretary' to Banana Yoshimoto's 'Bee Honey', The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories is filled with fear, charm, beauty and comedy. Curated by Jay Rubin, who has himself freshly translated several of the stories, and introduced by Haruki Murakami, this book will be a revelation to its readers.

A Hundred Horizons

A Hundred Horizons PDF Author: Sugata Bose
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674028579
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
"Between 1850 and 1950, the Indian Ocean teemed with people, commodities and ideas ... Sugata Bose finds in these intricate social and economic webs evidence of the interdependence of the peoples of the lands beyond the horizon, from the Middle East to East Africa to Southeast Asia"--Jacket.

Civilization

Civilization PDF Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101548029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower “A dazzling history of Western ideas.” —The Economist “Mr. Ferguson tells his story with characteristic verve and an eye for the felicitous phrase.” —Wall Street Journal “[W]ritten with vitality and verve . . . a tour de force.” —Boston Globe Western civilization’s rise to global dominance is the single most important historical phenomenon of the past five centuries. How did the West overtake its Eastern rivals? And has the zenith of Western power now passed? Acclaimed historian Niall Ferguson argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, the West developed six powerful new concepts, or “killer applications”—competition, science, the rule of law, modern medicine, consumerism, and the work ethic—that the Rest lacked, allowing it to surge past all other competitors. Yet now, Ferguson shows how the Rest have downloaded the killer apps the West once monopolized, while the West has literally lost faith in itself. Chronicling the rise and fall of empires alongside clashes (and fusions) of civilizations, Civilization: The West and the Rest recasts world history with force and wit. Boldly argued and teeming with memorable characters, this is Ferguson at his very best.

Delayed Rays of a Star

Delayed Rays of a Star PDF Author: Amanda Lee Koe
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385544359
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
An NPR Best Book of the Year A dazzling debut novel following the lives of three groundbreaking women--Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong, and Leni Riefenstahl--cinema legends who lit up the twentieth century At a chance encounter at a Berlin soirée in 1928, the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her famous--then, infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives. From Weimar Berlin to LA's Chinatown, from a bucolic village in the Bavarian Alps to a luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées, the different settings they inhabit are as richly textured as the roles they play: siren, victim, predator, or lover, each one a carefully calibrated performance. And in the orbit of each star live secondary players--a Chinese immigrant housemaid, a German soldier on leave from North Africa, a pompous Hollywood director--whose voices and viewpoints reveal the legacy each woman left in her own time, as well as in ours. Amanda Lee Koe's playful, wry prose guides the reader dexterously around murky questions of identity, complicity, desire, and difference. Intimate and clear-eyed, Delayed Rays of a Star is a visceral depiction of womanhood--its particular hungers, its oblique calculations, and its eventual betrayals--and announces a bold new literary voice.

Inhospitable

Inhospitable PDF Author: MARSHALL. MOORE
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781788691512
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Alone in Hong Kong, Lena Haze struggles with culture shock, business obstacles, and malignant ghosts - a part of her life she thought she'd put behind her. Lena's previous experiences are of little help because she's dealing with Chinese ghosts now. Different rules, rituals, and customs apply, and she has no idea what is coming.

Diamond Hill

Diamond Hill PDF Author: Kit Fan
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0349701679
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
'A rapid-fire debut with a cinematographer's eye for detail... Fan strikes a deft balance between agile set-pieces and lingering beauty.' Naoise Dolan 'A vivid, powerful portrait of a vanishing world.' David Nicholls 'Do you know what it was like here? You wouldn't believe the glamour. We had our own film studio, redbrick houses for the stars, even Jackie Chan. Now look at us - the Hollywood of the Orient will soon be gone altogether.' 1987, Hong Kong. Trying to outrun his demons, a young man who calls himself Buddha returns to the bustling place of his birth. He moves into a small Buddhist nunnery in the crumbling neighbourhood of Diamond Hill, where planes landing at the nearby airport fly so close overhead that travellers can see into the rooms of those below. As Buddha begins to care for the nuns and their neighbours, this pocket of the old city is vanishing. Even the fiery Iron Nun cannot prevent the frequent landslides that threaten the nunnery she fights for, and in the nearby shanty town, a faded film actress who calls herself Audrey Hepburn is hiding a deep secret and trying to survive with her teenage daughter who has a bigger fish to fry. But no one arrives in Diamond Hill by accident, and Buddha's ties to this place run deeper than he is willing to admit. Can he make peace with his past and survive in this disappearing city? Beautifully written and utterly compelling, Diamond Hill is a gorgeous love letter that perfectly captures a lost place, filled with unforgettable characters. If you love books by Hanya Yanagihara, Colm Tóibín and Ocean Vuong, you'll adore this haunting and evocative novel. What people are saying about Diamond Hill: 'The best debut I've read in ages... A glorious luminosity to the writing and the reading experience is rather like looking into a kaleidoscope and giving it several twirls.' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'A gripping and highly accomplished debut... A thoroughly enjoyable and profound exploration of powerlessness, identity and the evolution of a city.' Guardian 'Fan is an exuberant chronicler of a lost time and place... It's a timely consideration of Hong Kong's recent past.' The Times 'An exhilarating and original tale, Diamond Hill marks award-winning Fan as a writer to watch.' Cosmopolitan 'Fan creates a textured, unsettled portrait of a territory facing a decisive ending... The dark drama that unfolds is an elegy to that vanished vanishing world.' The Wall Street Journal 'Gleams with pleasurable insights... Memorable moments are sketched by a poet's hand.' South China Morning Post

Ghetto at the Center of the World

Ghetto at the Center of the World PDF Author: Gordon Mathews
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226510204
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
4e de couv.: Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district, is home to a remarkably motley group of people. Traders, laborers, and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there, and even backpacking tourists rent rooms in what is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet. But as Ghetto at the center of the world shows us, the Mansions is a world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations -instead it epitomizes the way globalization actually works for most of the world's people. Through candid stories that both instruct and enthrall, Gordon Mathews lays bare the building's residents' intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas.