Indelible City: Dispossesion and Defiance in Hong Kong

(Paperback)

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Description

The story of Hong Kong has long been obscured by competing myths: to Britain, a barren rock with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial that had at last returned to the ancestral fold. To its inhabitants, the city was a place of refuge and rebellion, whose own history was so little taught that they began mythmaking their own past.

When protests erupted in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Limraised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who had covered the region for a decaderealised that she was uniquely positioned to unearth Hong Kongs untold stories.

Lims deeply researched and personal account is startling, casting new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Indelible City features guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the centre of their own story.

Wending through it all is the King of Kowloon, whose iconic street art both embodied and inspired the identity of Hong Konga site of disappearance and reappearance, power and powerlessness, loss and reclamation.

Reviews

The best book about the indelible city to date. Irresistibly real and emotionally authentic, it shines with a shimmering light rarely seen in political narrative. A truly extraordinary elegy. * Ai Weiwei *
I absolutely loved this book. Each page is a revelation about a city whose history I thought I knew well. Lims exploration of Hong Kongs identity is insightful, refreshing and entirely original. * Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha *
An utterly brilliant and original ode to Hong Kong, throbbing with eccentricity and sense of place. Like Joseph Mitchells singular rendering of New York, Lims Hong Kong will be read decades from now as an indelible portrait. * Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award *
I read Louisa Lims book slowly, haunted by memories and stymied by sorrow. An archaeological dig into the disappearing present, her fascinating and heartbreaking account reveals an indelible history hidden in plain sight, and a future that Hong Kongs unique sensibility promises even as the worlds most powerful autocracy strives to erase it. * Geremie Barm, editor of China Heritage *
'Lim deftly weaves her way through the ages, arriving at our current time, all the while capturing Hong Kong's soul inside the book's pages. * Newsweek *
Limmixes memoir and reportage in this riveting portrait of Hong Kong. Interweaving an up-close view of recent protests against Chinese rule with evocative details about Hong Kongs colonial past, [Indelible City] is a vivid and vital contribution to postcolonial history. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *
Lims outstanding history of Hong Kong is an epic must-read, covering Hong Kong from its earliest beginnings to the 201920 protests. From the first page, the importance of language and the voices of Hong Kongers are central themes. Yet Indelible City captures much more as it records the struggle of people oppressed by British colonialism and suppressed by communist China yet determined in their pursuit of freedom and cultural identity. * Booklist (starred review) *
An affecting portrayal of the spirited nature of Hong Kong and the many challenges it faces. * Kirkus Reviews *
ExtraordinaryA must-read for our timesHonours the vibrancy of Hong Kong, its contradictions and the people who fought for it. * Tim Watts *
Unapologetically personalThe engine for this vivid, loving book is Lims insistent questioningher recognition that whatever comes next for Hong Kong will require not only fortitude but also willful acts of imagination. * New York Times *
Illuminating[Lim] writes mostly as a coolly objective observer, but opens with an account of crossing the line into activismThough dominated by events since 1997, Indelible City also attempts a revisionist telling of Hong Kongs history. * Economist *
Indelible City dismantles the received wisdom about Hong Kongs history and replaces it with an engaging, exhaustively researched account of its long struggle for sovereignty. * New York Times *
The book is a celebration of an exceptional city and its colourful characters, particularly an eccentric artist known as the King of Kowloon. But reading it was also a mourning process for thoselike mewho share the authors assessment of recent eventsIndelible City is an important book which will help keep the city, as many remember it, alive. * Australian Financial Review *
An ambitious project and a grand achievement, blending reportage and memoir to tell the story of a city caught between two competing narrativesIndelible City demonstrates the power of words in ways readers might not expect. * Elizabeth Flux, Saturday Paper *
'Lims discovery is that for those not handed a ready-made identity at birth, it is hard won yet uniquely powerful once gained. Of course, this too is the story of Hong KongLim captures the heroism of futilityof a unique society and a distinct voice on the brink of vanishing forever. * Kurt Johnson, Australian *
Indelible City is more than a book: it is a haunting testimonial to the intertwined vitality, tragedy and hope of Hong Kong. Louisa Lim weaves together three powerful narratives to tell this citys storyUnforgettable readingIf academic or journalistic work on China in the age of the National Security Law, concentration camps and genocide is to have any meaning at all beyond its own vapid self-reproduction, it must embrace an activist ethosof which Indelible City is an outstanding example. * Conversation *
This is the best of boots-on-the-ground journalism that has a real sense of immediacy. * Steven Carroll, Age *
I devoured Indelible City by Louisa Lim, a punk history of Hong Kong. * Jock Serong *
Gorgeously evocativeAn intimate and dream-like wend through the streets of Hong Kong, revealing layers of the bracing, complex, and palimpsestic city. Pierced through with Lims clear-eyed limpidity and passionBy weaving together multiple histories and narratives, those real and fictive, sanctioned and preserved, erased and newly discovered, Lim pushes back against the authoritative, state-imposed narrative. * Lit Hub *

Author Bio

Louisa Lim is the author of The Peoples Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (2014), which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism. She covered China and Hong Kong for a decade as a correspondent for the BBC and NPR, and has reported for the New York Times, Washington Post and Guardian. Raised in Hong Kong, she lives in Australia with her two children and teaches at the University of Melbourne.