Fragrant Harbour

Product Information

Tschudi was first introduced to the linocut when, still a school-girl, she saw an exhibition of the colour cuts of animals by Norbertine Bresslern-Roth (1891-1978). After schooling in Edinburgh, and contrary to his father’s wishes, Edward did not take up work at the mill; he wanted instead to study art. John Lanchester is the author of The Debt to Pleasure (winner of the Whitbread and Hawthornden prizes) and Mr. Spanning a good 50 years of Hong Kong history the novel has a compelling cast of characters and gives an interesting picture of how the territory has evolved during that time. Sasek was instructing the child about the adult’s world, as much as capturing things of immediate interest to the child.

Partly this because his story is about the air conditioner business, guanxi and the difficulties of doing business under Communist governments, but it's also because Matthew is a much less interesting person than Tom and Dawn. A few select landmarks in the footage can still be seen today, notably Aberdeen Bay, the Peak Tram and Victoria Harbour. The word ‘Hong Kong’ (or 香港 for those who can) is an approximate phonetic rendering of the spoken Cantonese, and the Cantonese word actually means ‘fragrant harbour’. Since he has not yet informed his wife of his redundancy, Mr Phillips sets out from home as usual, as if he was on his way to the City.The pictures reference the child’s perspective, whilst the words are in the idiomatic style of a kind yet pedagogic parent, one who instinctually knows what might appeal, yet also wishes to be informative. Der Leser erlebt den zweiten Weltkrieg, den Aufstieg der Stadt zur Handelsmetropole, den Einzug der Triaden und anderer krimineller Vereinigungen. This is Sasek: Miroslav Sasek (1916-1980) (or Meer-oh-slahf Sah-sek as pronounced, and written Ŝaŝek, but best known by his drawn signature: ‘M. He went on to become Head of Drawing and Painting at Gloucester College of Art (1931) where he taught until his retirement in 1963.

John Lanchester's first novel, The Debt to Pleasure, delighted gourmets and others - the former because its principal character is a disciple of Brillat Savarin, devoted to gustatory ecstasy as a good man might be devoted to virtue, the latter just for the jokes. Fragrant Harbour is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span Asia’s last seventy years. Hap Mun Bay, just around the corner from Hebe Haven and a favourite of members recovering from New Year parties the night before .Were our ancestors really so passionless and correct, or is it a lazy half-lie, sanctified by usage? Although I'm admirer of John Lanchester's earlier and subsequent novels, I hadn't heard about "Fragrant Harbor" until recently, or known that Lanchester was born and brought up in Hong Kong. Lanchester was raised in Hong Kong (his grandparents had settled there in the 1930s and been interned by the Japanese during the war), and his insider view of the place is about as far from the small, lyrical Western-Asian novels of recent years as can be imagined. The book is in near fine condition (black boards with cream lettering to spine) with light bumping to the head and tail of the spine, top corner of the back board and light age tanning to the pages. It would have worked equally well told entirely through Tom’s eyes without cluttering it up with Dawn’s and Matthew’s voices as well.

Directly after school she noticed an advertisement in The Studio inviting applications for a training programme specialising in linocuts at The Grosvenor School of Art, London. A favour – an implausible one – has taken Dawn from a job on a local paper in Blackpool to the diary column on a national, and onward to a post as a features editor.The title is a translation of "Hong Kong", and most of the story takes place in that territory, while it was still a colony. While Fragrant Harbour is a highly entertaining read, one that taught me much about Hong Kong’s recent history in an enjoyable manner, its narrative structure lets it down slightly. This is one I have been meaning to read for some time now but have never got around to it – your review suggests to me that this might have been wise! Tom has the benefit of being a survivor, first as a hotelier in a cut-throat business and second as a prisoner of war captured by the Japanese during the Second World War.