Indelible City : Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

 
　　長久以來，香港的歷史似乎總是由他人所定義：對英國來說，她是貧脊荒蕪之地，對中國來說，她是終於收復的失土。她從來未能用自己的聲音，好好訴說自己的故事。
 
　　當香港抗爭行動在2019年爆發，並面臨來自北京日漸加劇的壓制，《重返天安門》作者、資深記者林慕蓮在香港的成長背景，以及她的華人與英國血統，都讓她為香港的處境深深觸動，也她處於報導、記述香港歷史的獨特位置。
 
　　她深入查訪、挖掘香港歷史上的重要時刻，從英國殖民、主權移交到反送中，透過書中的核心人物「九龍皇帝」曾灶財──這名不斷在街頭塗鴉、留下「主權宣言」的老人的故事，在這部作品中呈現以香港人為中心的香港史，記述強權壓制下的掙扎、對自由與文化認同的追求，為這座城市、生活其中的人們，竭力留下無法被抹去的紀錄。

　　(文/博客來編譯)

　　Named a most anticipated book of 2022 by NEWSWEEK, LITERARY HUB and COSMOPOLITAN

　　An award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger indelibly captures the place, its people, and the untold history they are claiming, just as it is being erased.

　　The story of Hong Kong has long been dominated by competing myths: to Britain, a 'barren rock' with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial, at last returned to the ancestral fold.   For decades, its history was simply not taught, especially to Hong Kongers, obscuring its origins as a place of refuge and rebellion.

　　When protests erupted in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Lim—raised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who has covered the region for more than a decade—realized that she was uniquely positioned to unearth Hong Kong's untold stories.

　　Lim's deeply researched and personal account casts startling new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Indelible City features guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists and others who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the center of their own story. Wending through it all is the King of Kowloon, whose iconic street art both embodied and inspired the identity of Hong Kong—a site of disappearance and reappearance, power and powerlessness, loss and reclamation.
 
　　"Arriving at the exact right moment, Indelible City charts the course of the region by digging deeply into its history.  Lim deftly weaves her way through the ages, arriving at our current time, all the while capturing Hong Kong's soul inside the book's pages." -Newsweek

　　"Riveting...a vivid and vital contribution to postcolonial history." -Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

　　"Lim's outstanding history of Hong Kong is an epic must-read...From the first page, the importance of language and the voices of Hong Kongers are central themes. Yet Indelible City captures much more as it records the struggle of people oppressed by British colonialism and suppressed by communist China yet determined in their pursuit of freedom and cultural identity." -Booklist, STARRED review

　　"Throughout this smooth mixture of reportage and memoir, Lim ably captures the increasingly malignant actions by the Communist Party, which have become more alarming by the day. An affecting portrayal of the spirited nature of Hong Kong and the many challenges it faces." -Kirkus Reviews