For an arresting mosaic of the great and complex metropolis known as Hong Kong -- and an insight into what the people of the city live by and die for -- a reader need look no further than the Collected Hong Kong Stories of David T K Wong. Wong, a native son of this once British Crown Colony and now Special Administrative Region of China, has drawn upon his own experiences as a journalist, educator, government official and businessman to assemble a range of memorable characters for his tales. They range from barmen to labourers, from jockeys to expatriate bureaucrats, from scholars to tycoons, and each is infused with insights into the collective soul of the edgy, anomalous and perplexing place he finds himself. These 18 stories are carefully crafted in the grand tradition of O Henry, Maugham and Saki. Each has been individually published in a magazine or broadcast over radio in Britain, the United States, Hong Kong or elsewhere. They can be dipped into and savoured separately or feasted upon all in one go. Either way, the result can only be satisfying.
David T. K. Wong was born in Hong Kong and has degrees in political science and journalism from Stanford. At the ripe old age of 89, he is publicly exposing for the first time some of the shadier insider dealings in the colonial administration during the governorship of Sir Murray MacLehose. Wong is now resident in Malaysia where he is working on the next volume of his family memoirs, dealing with the goings-on in the Hong Kong commercial sector during the 1980s when he was managing director of Li & Fung, an international trading company. He is the founder of the annual David T. K. Wong Fellowship in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in the UK. His website is at http://davidtkwong.net/.
David T. K. Wong sends us on exciting journeys between East and West and challenges our perceptions of what has been gained and what could be lost in the process ... An exceptional read. Pam Fraser Solomon, Senior Producer, Short Stories, BBC Radio 4
Wong is an exceptionally fluent writer whose compelling stories cover a wide range of themes. His talent sparkles, inveigles and mesmerizes. Sylvia Tankel, Editor of Short Stories International
Clean, direct and subtly understated... an instinctive grasp of the short-story formula. South China Morning Post
David T. K. Wongs prose, spare and clean, occasionally rises to eloquence. Sometimes I found myself pausing to replay a paragraph, marvelling at how nicely he lays words down on the page.
For English readers starved for something more penetrating than tourist-snap fiction, this writer comes across as a convincing storyteller. Joel McCormick, Window magazine
Wong has been hailed as a Hong Kong voice in English.
Perhaps most impressive of all is Wongs studied refusal to sensationalise a culture chiefly known to fiction for its flamboyant characters and settings. Robert McCrum, The Observer
The author has a delightful ability to find the extraordinary in ordinary people. Sunday Standard
