Better known as a travel author, or even, amongst the younger of us, as the father of BBC journalist Louis Theroux, Paul Theroux also doubles as the author of fiction novels. Most of them will feature some exotic town, travel being the constant in the man’s life obviously.

This novel about the last days of Hong Kong starts with an average character, leading a fairly ordinary life. As the heir of his father’s and his father’s companion’s fortune, he leads and owns a factory in the still very British colony. But things are about to change. Bunt is living with his old mother, doing his work and hardly mingles with any Chinese, apart from the odd liaison with a girl in his factory or the strippers he meets in dodgy bars.

But as the takeover approaches, at least it feels like a takeover, Hongkong is preparing itself for Chinese leadership. Bunt isn’t prepared. He is so extremely British; he can’t imagine himself in a different country. Then he gets an offer he can’t refuse. Or does he? The consequences reach much further than he can possibly imagine.

I prefer his travel books.

Quote: “There were days that Hongkong appeared nothing different from a suburb in London, where they had lived before the war.” (P.7)

Paul Theroux, whose inveterate globe-trotting marks him as one of the most restless writers working today, lands us in the Far East with this novel of personal lives swept up in the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. But the end of Colonial rule is perfectly unwelcome for Neville Mullard and his mother Betty, who run a textile factory that's been in the family for 50 years, and who have spent a lifetime insulating themselves from the Chinese culture that's all around them. Now, the shadowy and dangerous Mr. Hung wants to buy the business, and he won't take no for an answer--whether or not the Mullards want to sell. Theroux, the author of several travel books, has few equals when it comes to the portrayal of exotic cultures, a skill that makes this one of the first great novels of the Hong Kong handover of 1997.

(Abstract source: http://www.amazon.com/Kowloon-Tong-Paul-Theroux/dp/0395860296)

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. ( )

I get the impression that books about british expats are all alike. They all star those superiour complex laden brits, staying 15 years in a country whose food they detest, people they look down on and whose language they can't be bothered to learn. While I don't find it difficult to believe that there are people who'd act so condescendingly it doesn't actually help to root for the main character. Throw in the creepy mother-son relationship between a controlling 70 year old and a brothel-frequenting 45 year old who doesn't stand up for the woman he decides he's fallen in love with and you've lost me.
I don't think it's a bad book, though, I just didn't like any of the characters. I released it at a cinema and hope the next reader will like it more!

As much as I do agree that Theroux has pretty perfect prose, there's something about the way he sees things and how he shows a lot of thing in bad light that make me cringe a little bit (This claim made after trying to read another of his books to no avail). It's a skewed view, as far as I'm concerned, being a Chinese from HK, that Theroux chose to write about what happened to an Englishman at a time when the colony was to be handed over to Chinese authority, and how an Englishman lost his way. The Chinese to me are being portrayed in an exaggeratedly negative way I think, because it's only natural that we don't make friends with people that don't look like us. I don't suppose a Chinese would easily get his way in the snobbish London society either, for similar reasons. Too bad history unfolds itself the way it does, and too bad foreigners find it hard to establish the status, after the hand-over, the way they assume they always could. Too bad Theroux chooses to portray the scenario in a vulgarly biased fashion. ( )