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Paul Theroux

Kowloon Tong: A Novel Paperback – 1 May 1997

by Paul Theroux (Author)

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For Neville ('Bunt') Mullard and his mother, Hong Kong is part of Britain - high teas and bad weather, race meetings at Happy Valley, roast beef at Fatty's Chop House and, for Bunt, the 'blue hotels' in Kowloon Tong. Now, Britain is about to hand over Hong Kong to China, but for the Mullards the 'Chinese take-away', as they call it, does not particularly concern them. When Mr Hung, a well-spoken gentleman from the Chinese mainland offers to buy their family business, Imperial Stitching, Bunt refuses them out of hand. But it soon becomes clear that Mr Hung will accept no refusals.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Hamish Hamilton
Publication date

1 May 1997
Dimensions

15.2 x 1.7 x 23.4 cm
ISBN-10

0241137705
ISBN-13

978-0241137703
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Lawrence Osborne
373
Hardcover
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hamish Hamilton (1 May 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241137705
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241137703
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.2 x 1.7 x 23.4 cm

Customer reviews:
61 ratings

About the author

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Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux was born and educated in the United States. After graduating from university in 1963, he travelled first to Italy and then to Africa, where he worked as a Peace Corps teacher at a bush school in Malawi, and as a lecturer at Makerere University in Uganda. In 1968 he joined the University of Singapore and taught in the Department of English for three years. Throughout this time he was publishing short stories and journalism, and wrote a number of novels. Among these were Fong and the Indians, Girls at Play and Jungle Lovers, all of which appear in one volume, On the Edge of the Great Rift (Penguin, 1996).

In the early 1970s Paul Theroux moved with his wife and two children to Dorset, where he wrote Saint Jack, and then on to London. He was a resident in Britain for a total of seventeen years. In this time he wrote a dozen volumes of highly praised fiction and a number of successful travel books, from which a selection of writings were taken to compile his book Travelling the World (Penguin, 1992). Paul Theroux has now returned to the United States, but he continues to travel widely.

Paul Theroux's many books include Picture Palace, which won the 1978 Whitbread Literary Award; The Mosquito Coast, which was the 1981 Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year and joint winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was also made into a feature film; Riding the Iron Rooster, which won the 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; The Pillars of Hercules, shortlisted for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; My Other Life: A Novel, Kowloon Tong, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Fresh-air Fiend and Hotel Honolulu. Blindness is his latest novel. Most of his books are published by Penguin.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

61 global ratings

5 star		41%
4 star		30%
3 star		17%
2 star		4%
1 star		9%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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mdh

Offbeat and intriguing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 23 June 2016

Verified Purchase

I listened to a spoken word version of the novel some years ago and found it quite engrossing. The book has been equally
enjoyable and I can recommend it.

Helpful

G. Heath

A good read relevant to an understanding of Hong Kong then and now (2022), and beyond...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 11 September 2022

Kowloon Tong is a novel, so it's not really necessary to be relevant to an understanding of Hong Kong, but it just so happens that it is. I mean look at what's happened in the last couple of years since the student protests: China comes in and locks people up left right and centre. Theroux saw it all coming-- a lot of people did including me...Getting back to the novel, which I have read belatedly, I think it's a cracking read, a tragicomedy in essence. How anyone can say the story is "mundane", I will never know. Other dismissive criticisms above like "not up to the usual standard" are patently absurd. Theroux writes very well indeed, and always to a high standard, as he does in this novel. Other more serious criticisms claim "racism" and "racial stereotyping." Hello, this is a NOVEL, so criticisms like "racial stereotyping and xenophobic attitudes that seem to be the narrator's not Bunt's..." are way off the mark. You just can't assume that. Theroux has taken some types and exaggerated them for effect. Mr Hung is a kind of caricature. Other characters are in type. I thought the repressed Neville "Bunt" Mullard was a finely drawn and realistic portrayal of that type of British ex-pat. Theroux lived in Hong Kong and knew China at the time of writing; his powers of observation are acute and they are all over this carefully crafted story. By the way, "Chinky-Chonks" is obviously a replacement for the egregiously racist "Chinks" and I guess the intensifier "bally" is replacing "bloody." That's regrettable censorship right there, probably done at the publisher's behest. ("Bloody" is not really a strong word in Britain). Anyway, I enjoyed reading this novel, notwithstanding some valid critical remarks made above By Mathew Yau. I really admired the seamless chapter transitions, the portrayal of place, and the predicament of the main characters. The ambivalent ending was quite appropriate, and I didn't think it was rushed.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 14 June 2017

Verified Purchase

Not up to usual standard of author-and I was in Hong Kong during the time period (pre hand over) before it was handed back to China.
I must say it's an amazing place to visit & the book may come in handy for tourists.

Helpful

CloselyObservedEnglish

Memorable characters make the novel work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 6 August 2019

Theroux always writes about what he knows, and he knows the Chinese - and British ex-pats, which is just as important. 'Kowloon Tong' explores what happens when the rug is pulled from under you - in this case, Hong Kong is being handed over to the Chinese, throwing into doubt the future of a mother and son who had spent over forty years in the territory.

Helpful

Tsara

Shame about the ending

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 26 February 2007

The book was enthralling; from the first page I was captivated by the comical depiction of the expats and the sinister Mr Hung, but was sorely disappointed by the ending.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Yeah.........well.....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 August 2017

A handover cash-in that strove for prescience and missed the mark by a country mile. This is not so much a book about Hong Kong as the nightmare scenario that might have ensued had Beijing reneged on all agreements. The Chinese emissary from the mainland is a cliche, his agenda ludicrous and had Kafka or Ishiguro written this up, it couldn't be more stylishly out of focus.
Theroux's observations of the Chinese are spot-on, but layered with his customary racism (disgusting close-ups of the Chinese eating chicken feet - try watching a 400lb yank inhaling a Big Mac), affected familiarity and a strong undercurrent of that peculiar self-loathing that only an American who wishes he was British must endure. The writing is OK (I get the sense that the end was rushed) but anyone who knows Hong Kong or China - and I spent a decade there - will spot the holes.

Helpful

clive.maier.econology@dial.pipex.com

A novel of the human soul with the tension of a thriller.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 30 December 1999

Kowloon Tong reads like a tribute to Graham Greene. Certainly we are in Greeneland, a territory where people who are not bad do almost nothing that is good and where guttering hope is sustained only by the denial of self-knowledge. Bunt has always got by on comforting routines and secret pleasures but we are in the last days of British rule in Hong Kong and soon nothing will be the same again. The crisis comes like a tiny echo of the fall of Saigon. In the abandonment, Bunt loses his chance of redemptive love and the flight promises not a new life but an endless recreation of the old one. Theroux's themes of longing, compassion and entrapment together with his merciless observation of expatriates and chancers, produce the pace and tension of a thriller in a novel of the human soul. Theroux has produced one of his finest works and a book that will last.

5 people found this helpful

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Kowloon Tong: A Novel Paperback – 1 May 1997

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Paul Theroux

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