Hong Kong Belongers

Memories of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong.

Lyrical, wry, amusing, deceptively gentle, Simon Barnes’s second novel packs a powerful punch after it has crept up on the reader with the narrator’s fond reminiscences of expat life in pre-handover Hong Kong. The hazy and often hilarious memories of work and play in the heartstopping beauty and pulse-racing commercialism of the colony is suddenly flooded by darker memories of tragedy and loss, although Barnes, the most optimistic and delightful of authors, pulls the reader through to a warmly satisfying conclusion.

Reviews

Praise for Rogue Lion Safaris:

‘Barnes has created a new category of adventure story, doing for safaris what Dick Francis has done for horse-racing, but better written’
The Times

‘An exceptionally good first novel’
Mail on Sunday

‘This novel is just about the next best thng to going on safari oneself, such is its evocation of place’
Oxford Times

‘It has the smell and feel of the bush… It is sad, it is true, and it is a good story’
The Spectator

About the author

Simon Barnes is an award-winning sports journalist (The Times, Spectator) and author of Rogue Lion Safaris and Horsesweat and Tears, as well as several books on wildlife and conservation. He lives in Hertfordshire.