Goodbye Chinatown (Paperback)

Kit Fan

ISBN 10: 1642861650 / ISBN 13: 9781642861655

Editore: World Editions, 2026

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Paperback. As her native Hong Kong seethes, torn between two world powers, Amber Fan tries to build a career as a chef in London's Chinatown.Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London's Chinatown following the failure of her father's traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy? Set in the aftermath of Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule, Goodbye Chinatown iconic hub of London's hospitality economy, and using food to reflect on identity, Goodbye Chinatown paints a portrait of an enterprising emigre who, faced with divided loyalties, invents her own language for home through the culinary arts.'Kit Fan writes place like no one else, using an emigre's metonymic key. A totality too large and painful to hold all at once comes to us in gradually accumulated detail through dishes, proverbs that don't quite translate, memories of sudden calamity.Goodbye Chinatownis not an elegy to Hong Kong, nor a love letter, nor anything so blandly digestible; rather it is an embodiment, an ongoing navigation, and a refusal to deny agency to characters who neither escape seismic political shifts nor lose the vibrancy that makes you desperately care for them to the last page. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand the lived generationaltexture ofwhat's happening now in Hong Kong.' Naoise Dolan, author ofExciting TimesandThe Happy Couple'Caught between two cultures and cuisines, a gifted young chef works to make her professional and personal marks in Kit Fan's moving novel Goodbye Chinatown. Goodbye Chinatown is an affecting novel about navigating the porous borders between cultures. Its descriptions of food are mouth-watering. The shifting political and cultural climates just beyond Amber's restaurant doors are an engrossing backdrop to the book's appealing dramas.' Foreword Reviews'"We all love food, but what exactly is love?" asks Bobby about his family, who oscillates betweenHong Kong and London. Bobby's question captures the essence of Fan's novel, an insightful,reflective, and tender exploration of indescribable familial bonds, whether food, ambition,memories, or national loyalties.GoodbyeChinatownshares different perspectives on being Hong Kongese, particularly in the context ofthe British handover to China. Fan comprehensively portrays a changing Hong Kong alongsidedevelopments in London's Chinatown, delivering a touching look at the search for home.' Booklist'Kit Fan has surpassed himself withGoodbye Chinatown, a novel full of sense, sensibility and sensation: food, family, identity, appetite, time and love. Fan's work reflects powerful themes both personal and political, but wears it all with extraordinary lightness and sensuality. His observations are delicate and precise and he shows that while the fates of entireterritories hinge on power and politics, so do families. But succor and salvation come in the small, fragile things: forging (or re-forging) community, family and belonging through simple acts of giving, and sharing a table.' BIDISHA,journalist, broadcaster and author of The Future of Serious Art'Given the quality of the prose, the succulent descriptions of Chinatown food, and the wide-ranging themes, it comes as no surprise that each review [o Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Codice articolo 9781642861655

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Goodbye Chinatown (Paperback)
• Editore: World Editions
• Data di pubblicazione: 2026
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1642861650
• ISBN 13: 9781642861655
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: new

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

As her native Hong Kong seethes, torn between two world powers, Amber Fan tries to build a career as a chef in London’s Chinatown. 

Amber Fan, a young Oxford-educated chef, opens the first Chinese fusion joint in London’s Chinatown following the failure of her father’s traditional restaurant. When her parents decide to return to Hong Kong, taking with them their young son Bobby as well as the haunting secret surrounding his birth, Amber is left alone in London. That is, until a woman called Celeste hires out the restaurant, coughing up three grand for a dinner for one. Who is this extravagant stranger, and how did she get so wealthy?Set in the aftermath of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, Goodbye Chinatown shows a family torn between two countries. Amber throws herself into her career to escape the painful cycle of family separations and reunions. The tastes and smells spark off every page in Kit Fan’s latest novel, making for a truly multisensorial reading experience. Offering a behind-the-scenes of this suburb of London’s hospitality economy, and using food to reflect on identity, Goodbye Chinatown paints a portrait of an enterprising émigré who, faced with divided loyalties, invents her own language for home through the culinary arts.

Informazioni sull'autore

Kit Fan is a novelist, poet, and critic. He was born in Hong Kong and moved to the UK at the age of twenty-one. Kit Fan’s first novel, Diamond Hill, was published in 2021 by World Editions. His third poetry collection, The Ink Cloud Reader, was shortlisted for the 2023 T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection. He was shortlisted twice for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, and has won the Hong Kong University International Poetry Prize, Northern Writers Awards for Poetry and Fiction, Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, and Poetry’s Editors Prize for Reviewing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Vice-Chair of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, and Co-Chair of the Copyright Licensing Agency. Goodbye Chinatown is his second novel.