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Hong Kong International Literary Festival

We celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival by bringing you book reviews, features, and author profiles connected to the event. Read up before attending events, which run from November 5-15. Visit festival.org.hk for details

last updated:

9 September, 2024

Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka. 

CREDIT: Dominic Sansoni

Books and literature

‘Stuff of fantasy’: Sri Lanka author Shehan Karunatilaka on Booker Prize win

Shehan Karunatilaka, Booker Prize winning Sri Lankan author of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida and a speaker at the 2023 Hong Kong International Literary Festival, opens up about the win, his writing process and more.

10 Mar 2023 - 4:15PM

Books and literature

Review | Julia and the Shark – children’s book that’s harrowing and inspiring

13 Nov 2021 - 7:26PM

Artificial intelligence

‘It’s important to give people hope’: Chen Qiufan on his AI sci-fi

10 Nov 2021 - 10:14AM

Profile

Profile | British author Horatio Clare on his nervous breakdown and life as a writer

After growing up Wales, Clare worked with brilliant minds at the BBC and became an accomplished writer. A breakdown and subsequent recovery informs his latest book.

6 Nov 2021 - 6:15PM

Horatio Clare’s latest book, Heavy Light, involves a lengthy investigation into mental health. Photo: James Bedford

Books and literature

Brexit Britain, where amnesia and nostalgia about empire coexist

‘How can you give back a colony and be only dimly aware of its history?’ says Sathnam Sanghera of Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China. The author’s alternative history of modern Britain has become a bestseller.

5 Nov 2021 - 7:47PM

Books and literature

Review | Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning The Promise – virtuoso writing

The novel’s story of the downfall of a white South African family over 30 years is told with mesmerising skill through the use of multiple, shifting narratives. Galgut will appear at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.

4 Nov 2021 - 11:15PM

Coronavirus Hong Kong

Quarantine, mental health up for discussion at Hong Kong literary festival

The 2021 Hong Kong International Literary Festival will tap into the therapeutic power of storytelling and cover subjects such as workplace relationships and the city’s three-week quarantine for travellers.

4 Nov 2021 - 10:06PM

Discussions at the 2021 Hong Kong International Literary Festival will cover subjects such as the city’s three-week quarantine and its impacts. Photo: Shutterstock

Coronavirus pandemic: All stories

They use their love of books to help people through life’s challenges

Book therapy, or bibliotherapy, brought Germaine Leece and Sonya Tsakalakis together and now they use their love of reading to help others cope with emotional problems.

8 Nov 2021 - 8:11AM

Books and literature

Review | An original, affecting novel of Chinese/Canadian identity and loss

Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung leavens its heavy narrative – of a girl growing up in Vancouver, and her father in Hong Kong who dies – with a joyful originality and freedom.

4 Nov 2021 - 10:09PM

Artificial intelligence

The 2021 Hong Kong International Literary Festival is bigger than ever

The idea of revival and recovery takes centre stage at the 2021 Hong Kong International Literary Festival, whose programme is organised around themes of wellness, community and trauma.

4 Nov 2021 - 10:10PM

Xiaolu Guo will appear to discuss her book A Lover’s Discourse at this year’s Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Photo: Ki Price

K-pop idols

K-Pop Confidential author on showing ‘how fun and important K-pop is’

Korean-American writer Stephan Lee tells Tamar Herman about becoming a fan of K-pop, and why he chose to root young adult novels K-Pop Confidential and K-Pop Revolution in the experience of girl groups.

4 Nov 2021 - 10:12PM

Books and literature

Review | A Slow Fire Burning, whodunit by The Girl on the Train author

Every character in Paula Hawkins’ London-set third novel is damaged in some way. When two deaths occur and police investigate, two other, past deaths offer clues as to why.

13 Nov 2021 - 2:29PM

Books and literature

Review | Amor Towles’ third novel offers a tonic in era of loony alternate realities

In The Lincoln Highway, bestselling novelist has written a hard-luck road story with a depth and sweep at odds with its premise – three teenagers in a Studebaker seeking a missing mother and a hoard of money.

12 Nov 2021 - 2:51PM

Books and literature

Hong Kong-born author on her autobiographical debut novel

Hannah Bent, author of When Things are Alive They Hum, about two sisters living apart, one with Down syndrome, never expected to be back living in Hong Kong. ‘Being a third-culture kid … I don’t know where I’m from,’ she says.

4 Nov 2021 - 10:15PM

Author Hannah Bent in Kennedy Town, Hong Kong. She grew up in the city, and unexpectedly returned three years ago to live in Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP/Jonathan Wong

Chinese authors

Review | Marilyn Chin writes for ‘wild-girl’ Chinese-Americans

Drawn from a prodigious career of poetry and advocacy, A Portrait of the Self as Nation is a masterclass in formal play, allusion and wit.

17 Nov 2020 - 10:52AM

Poet and activist Marilyn Chin. Photo: Handout

Books and literature

Review | On Lighthouses and The Last Story of Mina Lee

Mexico City-born writer Jazmina Barrera explores lighthouses around the world and in literature, while Nancy Jooyoun Kim’s debut novel takes the reader through grief, racism, the Korean war, family separation and more.

16 Nov 2020 - 7:24PM

Chinese overseas

How Much of These Hills is Gold: Chinese take on American western

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, American-Chinese author C Pam Zhang’s novel takes a timely look at racism in the US through the eyes of two Chinese orphans.

16 Nov 2020 - 4:15PM

Chinese authors

Review | In Strange Beasts of China, fantastic creatures live among humans

Yan Ge’s novel, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang, follows a cryptozoologist who is tasked with learning about the beasts of a fictional city and in uncovering their stories, discovers more about herself, too.

9 Nov 2020 - 4:54PM

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge. Photo: Handout

Americas and the Caribbean

Review | From Canada to Argentina, in search of Mennonite culture

Cameron Dueck’s 45,000km motorcycle ride, visiting Mennonite communities through the Americas, reveals much about schisms in the isolated religious communities.

9 Nov 2020 - 1:01PM

Indonesia

Review | The Wandering: where will Indonesian tale take you?

Intan Paramaditha’s choose-your-own-adventure narrative offers enchanting journeys through myth and folk tale, even if the fantastic options available are limited by the form.

7 Nov 2020 - 1:48PM

Hong Kong protests

How Hong Kong has long invited, and defied, prophecy

Sinologist and ‘global historian’ Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who bore witness to the anger and utopia of Occupy Central in 2014 and last year’s Hong Kong protests, makes just one prediction: that he is unlikely to visit China again.

7 Nov 2020 - 12:25PM

What lies ahead for Hong Kong? Photo: Reuters

Books and literature

Review | Hong Kong writers use allegory to bring the city to life

Hong Kong Writers Circle presents a collection of sixteen short stories that explore, reflect and refract the reality of living in Hong Kong though allegory.

3 Nov 2020 - 4:24PM

The new anthology from Hong Kong Writers Circle, Masking the City: Hong Kong in Allegory, will be launched at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Photo: Handout

Books and literature

Three books to read before Hong Kong’s literary festival

Amy Stanley, Sophy Roberts and Marie Lu will be appearing online at this year’s event, but there is still time to become acquainted with their works.

2 Nov 2020 - 12:39PM

India

Review | ‘He transformed what I wrote’: William Dalrymple on Bruce Wannell

In Tales from the Life of Bruce Wannell, historian Dalrymple joins Wannell’s siblings, neighbours and fellow travellers in celebrating the late linguist and adventurer.

2 Nov 2020 - 11:57AM

Coronavirus pandemic

Jhumpa Lahiri on why writing in Italian is like ‘falling in love’

English exposed the vulnerabilities of the Pulitzer Prize-winner’s parents while Italian gave her ‘a real and new sense of quiet’.

31 Oct 2020 - 1:41PM

Author Jhumpa Lahiri, who is one of the star guests at this year’s Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Photo: Liana Miuccio

Books and literature

The worth of Hong Kong’s literary festival to authors who take part

For Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz the Hong Kong International Literary Festival was one of the most memorable he’s participated in; for a first-time author, it marked a turning point. Will this year’s partly virtual event have the same resonance?

2 Nov 2020 - 1:24PM

Author Jeong Yu-jeong of South Korean at a book signing at last year’s Hong Kong International Literary Festival. Photo: Isaac Lawrence

Legacy of war in Asia

Review | China’s Good War: how national narratives shape history

Director of the China Centre at Oxford University Rana Mitter explores the way that China’s World War II narrative has changed over time.

5 Nov 2020 - 9:26PM

Books and literature

Review | Debut novel distils 80 years of fraught history in Vietnam

The Tran family’s saga of suffering laid out in poet Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s first novel, The Mountains Sing, is also that of her country, Vietnam. Truth is cast as the ultimate hero.

5 Nov 2020 - 9:28PM

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