Hong Kong is a city that begs to be written about — harbours and high-rises, empire and handover, a place where everyone is from somewhere else. It has inspired a wonderful shelf of fiction and non-fiction, and reading a few of these books before or during a visit turns the city from a skyline into a story.
Here is a spoiler-light reading list, from colonial-era classics to modern portraits.
In This Guide
A city made for stories
Few cities give writers more to work with than Hong Kong: a place of harbours and skyscrapers, of East meeting West, of colonial history, handover anxiety and relentless reinvention, where everyone seems to be from somewhere else and on their way to somewhere else. Little wonder it has inspired such a rich shelf of fiction and non-fiction. Reading a few of these before — or during — a visit deepens the city immeasurably; you start to see its layers.
Here is a personal, spoiler-light selection, from colonial-era classics to modern portraits, with a line on why each is worth your time.
Classics & the colonial city
'Love in a Fallen City' by Eileen Chang — the celebrated Chinese writer's novella of romance set against wartime Hong Kong is a touchstone, elegant and bittersweet. 'The World of Suzie Wong' by Richard Mason — the much-adapted 1957 novel of Wan Chai is very much of its time, but indelible in the city's pop-cultural imagination. And for non-fiction, 'Hong Kong' by Jan Morris remains the great literary portrait of the place — a sweeping, affectionate, deeply researched account of the city and its history that reads like a love letter.
These set the scene: the harbour city of trade and empire, glamour and unease, that later writers would inherit and complicate.
Memoir & a child's-eye city
For sheer atmosphere, 'Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood' by Martin Booth is a favourite — a warm, vivid memoir of the author's 1950s boyhood roaming the streets and markets of a vanished Hong Kong, brimming with sensory detail. It is the book I most often recommend to newcomers, because it makes you fall for the city's textures before you have even smelled the incense.
Memoir and reportage suit Hong Kong well, a city that changes so fast that even recent pasts feel like lost worlds worth recording.
Modern & post-handover
Closer to the present, 'The Piano Teacher' by Janice Y.K. Lee weaves wartime and 1950s Hong Kong into a much-loved novel of secrets and society. 'Fragrant Harbour' by John Lanchester traces the twentieth-century city through interlocking lives, and 'Kowloon Tong' by Paul Theroux captures the unease of the handover era. Beyond these, a newer wave of local and diaspora writers is mapping contemporary Hong Kong — identity, belonging, the city as it is now — and the annual Literary Festival is a great way to find them.
Read two or three across the eras and you get a kind of time-lapse of the city. Pair your reading with a wander: a Wan Chai walk after Suzie Wong, a market morning after Gweilo. Pick up any of them at the city's best bookshops.