The Impossible City

[The Impossible City] is a welcome counterpart to narratives that portray Hong Kong as either exotic or, more recently, as dystopian. Although she writes about various protest movements going back to 2003, also a year that was plagued by the deaths of Hong Kong icons Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, she also, by merging memoir and observation, goes far beyond the issues that make international headlines. -Asian Review of Books Karen Cheung is an amazingly good writer whose precise observations about Hong Kong puncture the gauzy cliches about mahjong and milk tea. In The Impossible City, she has produced an edgy, highly personal memoir about a generation living in cage-size apartments and confronting tear gas, electronic surveillance, cultural confusion, and depression as they witness the disappearance of the city they call home. -Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha With her radiant prose and incisive reporting, Karen Cheung renders modern-day Hong Kong with evocative detail in The Impossible City. The word protest lingered in my head as I read Cheung's words about coming of age in her constantly shifting city under the precarious specter of authoritarianism. There is an unmissable passion and intelligence in this story as Cheung weaves together cultural criticism and memoir, insisting that Hong Kong-her Hong Kong-is worthy of our close attention and love. -Kat Chow, author of Seeing Ghosts In a book that should appeal to young protesters everywhere, the author eloquently demonstrates how 'it takes work not to simply pass through a place but instead to become part of it.' Hong Kong is in dire straits, and Cheung brings us to the front lines to offer a clearer understanding of the circumstances. . . . A powerful memoir of love and anguish in a cold financial capital with an underbelly of vibrant, freedom-loving youth. -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Spanning over 20 years, Cheung's debut memoir examines her tumultuous childhood and young adulthood in Hong Kong. It tragically juxtaposes the author's severe depression with the disintegration of democracy in Hong Kong, depicting a heartrending destruction of Hongkongese cultural identity. . . An outstanding contribution for any library about one personal experience of political upheaval in Hong Kong. -Library Journal, starred review English-language readers might not find a book that more fully captures Hong Kong in such visceral detail and humanity as Cheung's, from its tragic political history to its hierarchical educational system, its woeful mental-health-care system, its failure to provide affordable housing to its people, its stultifying Confucian family ethos, and its heroic but embattled arts scene. . . . It's a grim status report, to be sure, but Cheung doesn't quite let go of hope for that extraordinary city. -Booklist Reflecting on the multivalenced reality of life in Hong Kong, journalist Cheung's debut leaps from one charged historical moment to the next to capture 'the many ways a city can disappear, but also the many ways we, its people, survive.' -Publishers Weekly