Xu Xi’s fifth book is entitled bilingually in Chinese-Cantonese as
Heunggong yahn dik duen liksi(Hong Kong people’s short history), and in English as
History’s Fiction: Stories from the City of Hong Kong. The first version of the title, by indicating the short period since the city has come into real existence following the British colonisation in the mid-nineteenth century, does not tell us that the book is really composed of thirteen short stories divided into four decades (
The Sixties,
The Seventies,
The Eighties, and
The Nineties). The second version of the title emphasises its storytelling narrative, but diverts our attention to the “fictitiousness” of the stories, away from the peculiar nature of our history, as well as the universal quality of our feelings which, as the…
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Citation: Lai, Amy. "History's Fiction: Stories from the City of Hong Kong". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 January 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12476, accessed 19 April 2024.]
