Evanescent Isles

From My City-Village

Xu Xi

• $21.95s paperback (9789622099463) Add to Cart
• hardcover not available

• Published: 2008
• Subject Listing: Contemporary Literature
• Bibliographic information: 125 pp., 14 illus., 5.5 x 8.5 in.
• Territorial rights: North American rights only
• Distributed for: Hong Kong University Press
• Contents

In this unusual book of quirky essays, some deeply personal, Xu Xi writes of Hong Kong's vanishing culture and sensibility. She zooms in on her own life in the city: on family, friends, and her professional history as both business executive and author, to focus on moments that offer wry observations of the shifting world around her. She casts her eye on films, pop stars, public transportation, and also muses on the political, without losing sight of the distinctly apolitical culture that evolved through the city's history as a former British colony.

Like letters to a dying lover, the tone shifts - at times comic or nostalgic, at others angry or despairing, at still others in raptures of delight - in a voice that is utterly Hong Kong.

Xu Xi is one of Hong Kong's leading English language writers. She is the author of six books of fiction and essays and has also edited several anthologies of Hong Kong writing. She is on the faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

acknowledgements

a crack in space

cracks in space of an over-privileged childhood
- Glories of the Nouveau Riche
- Godspeed
- Patriot's Act
- Et Tu Mon Pere?

forget not
- Forget "Not-This"
- Aerial Reverie
- Conversation Space

space break
- A Glossary of Evanescent English from Our Shores
- Keystrokes by Loong Hei
- Pop Goes the Idol

in the city-village
- Random Reality Show
- White Label
- Door
- Impermanent Abode

coda
A Short History of Our Shores

bibliography and references