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    The Unwalled City
    Unavailable
    The Unwalled City
    Unavailable
    The Unwalled City
    Ebook362 pages7 hours

    The Unwalled City

    By Xu Xi

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Xu Xi, one of Hong Kong's preeminent novelists, examines the lives of four of the city's residents amid the tension and uncertainties leading up to the 1997 handover to China.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSignal 8 Press
    Release dateDec 2, 2010
    ISBN9789881953438
    Unavailable
    The Unwalled City

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    Reviews for The Unwalled City

    3.5/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I would probably never have come across this book if I hadn't been searching out an X author for my alphabetical read challenge, but I'm glad I found it. The book is set in Hong Kong in the run up to the handover of the territory from the UK to China in 1997. There's not much in the way of plot - it's more a series of character portraits that gradually tangle up to make a story. The writing has a few odd features - changing viewpoint suddenly in the middle of a section was the one that jarred with me - but mostly it's a good well written book that adds up to a portrait of Hong Kong itself at an important point in it's history.
    • 3/5
      "Unwalled City" reads like a modern soap opera, weaving together the lives of a cast of four main characters, flanked by a host of side characters. Most of the cast hover on the periphery of Hong Kong, as either metaphorical or literal outsiders and Xi uses this to paint a vivid and believable portrait of Hong Kong, which incidentally is undergoing its handover from Britain to China in the book.Yet the outsider perspective felt a bit distant to me at times, and I caught a whiff of social commentary, or even criticism, at times. Not that social critique is a bad thing, but it left me caring less about the characters than I felt I should have. Critical or not, it does capture a moment of Hong Kong's history very well, and one that I've lived through as well.