On Java Road
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A veteran journalist in Hong Kong investigates the disappearance of a student protester in this “sensual, provocative, and riveting” (The Washington Post) novel from the celebrated author of The...
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New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • A veteran journalist in Hong Kong investigates the disappearance of a student protester in this “sensual, provocative, and riveting” (The Washington Post) novel from the celebrated author of The Forgiven—now a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes.“Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice.”—Katie Kitamura, The New York Times Book Review, on Beautiful Animals
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, CrimeReads
After two decades as a journalist in Hong Kong, ex-pat Englishman Adrian Gyle is ready to turn his back on the city he knew so well. But as Hong Kong erupts in violence with pro-democracy demonstrations hitting ever closer to home, could this be the final assignment Gyle was looking for?
Watching from the skyrises is his old friend Jimmy Tang, the scion of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. Through him Gyle uncovers an intriguing lead: the mysterious Rebecca, a student involved in the protests, and the latest of his Jimmy’s reckless dalliances. But when Rebecca goes missing and Jimmy hides, it rekindles in Gyle an old urge to investigate.
Piecing together Rebecca’s final days and hours, Gyle must tread carefully through a volatile world of friendship and betrayal. Vividly capturing a city on the brink, On Java Road tells the gripping story of a man between the fault lines of old worlds and new orders in pursuit of the truth.
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OneI thought, in those desperate and forgotten days, of that passage in a novel I had read in school where the narrator insists that he prefers to be known as a reporter rather than as a journalist, the humbler word better denoting what he does, namely transcribing what he sees. Today it s an even less dishonorable job description. I knew all the journalists in Hong Kong, of course, but I also knew a fair number of the reporters the citizens trailing the city s movable war zones, often like me all alone with a phone camera, and over time I had become more comfortable among them without consciously knowing why. But then what were we describing and for whom? I wasn t sure about that either. For myself, perhaps, and a few others scattered across the globe, such as I liked to imagine them, it would depend how deep you wanted to go into yourself. Some of these reporters had become strangely famous.
They were unlike me in that respect. Although I had been in Hong Kong for more than twenty years, slaving away as a reporter factotum gradually persevering his way into higher echelons of respectability, I had never made a name for myself in my adopted city. People knew me vaguely as a writer of something or other, and a fairly infamous glutton, but little more than that. I had gone there when still a young man, chilled to the marrow by London and its prospects and, more important, unable to see myself succeeding in that tomb of a city. I had arrived in Hong Kong just after the Handover, knowing nobody except my old university friend Jimmy Tang, and equipped only with a single suitcase and savings of five thousand sterling. I had done well given those inauspicious beginnings, but I had never become a star writer. And in a way I didn t mind at all. I had worked for a variety of newspapers, enjoyed a stint as a restaurant critic, married and divorced, accumulated a small apartment, and perfected the Chinese I had studied at university. In other words, I was an
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excellent nonentity.
In fact, at the beginning of that summer, when the disturbances had first erupted, I felt as though I were being woken from a deep and meaningless sleep. The city I had grown so used to comfortable, cynical, overflowing with wine dinners and white-truffle events was shattered the first moment I saw one of my neighbors wander onto Java Road at midnight in a white sleeveless shirt wielding a butcher s knife. I knew the man by face if not by name because I saw him every other day at Fung Shing, the restaurant on that same Java Road where I spent much of my time drinking tea with guan tang jiao soupy dumplings and editing my reports. I think he recognized me, too, but I was invisible to him in that moment on the street at midnight because he was there looking for protestors to intimidate, and a Chinese civil war doesn t automatically include European drifters.
Later, it was true, certain expatriated foreigners would indeed become local heroes in the conflict that consumed the city that summer, like the Frenchman with no legs who declared his solidarity with the students while standing precariously on his prostheses and orating to thrilling effect. I never found out his name, though I was resolved to buy him a drink if I ever saw him eating alone in a cheap restaurant. He was known merely as the Frenchman with No Legs. As for the fellow knife-wielding diner at Fung Shing, I never knew his name either, but he would reappear like the ghost in a folk tale, never losing his power to disquiet.
He was one of the countless Fujianese immigrants concentrated in North Point, the neighborhood where I lived, which had long been a bastion of pro-Beijing nationalist sentiment. Still speaking Mandarin instead of Cantonese, they were an island among the sea of Hong Kongers who otherwise barely noticed them. Their moment of vindicating the Motherland had come, and when they achieved critic
In fact, at the beginning of that summer, when the disturbances had first erupted, I felt as though I were being woken from a deep and meaningless sleep. The city I had grown so used to comfortable, cynical, overflowing with wine dinners and white-truffle events was shattered the first moment I saw one of my neighbors wander onto Java Road at midnight in a white sleeveless shirt wielding a butcher s knife. I knew the man by face if not by name because I saw him every other day at Fung Shing, the restaurant on that same Java Road where I spent much of my time drinking tea with guan tang jiao soupy dumplings and editing my reports. I think he recognized me, too, but I was invisible to him in that moment on the street at midnight because he was there looking for protestors to intimidate, and a Chinese civil war doesn t automatically include European drifters.
Later, it was true, certain expatriated foreigners would indeed become local heroes in the conflict that consumed the city that summer, like the Frenchman with no legs who declared his solidarity with the students while standing precariously on his prostheses and orating to thrilling effect. I never found out his name, though I was resolved to buy him a drink if I ever saw him eating alone in a cheap restaurant. He was known merely as the Frenchman with No Legs. As for the fellow knife-wielding diner at Fung Shing, I never knew his name either, but he would reappear like the ghost in a folk tale, never losing his power to disquiet.
He was one of the countless Fujianese immigrants concentrated in North Point, the neighborhood where I lived, which had long been a bastion of pro-Beijing nationalist sentiment. Still speaking Mandarin instead of Cantonese, they were an island among the sea of Hong Kongers who otherwise barely noticed them. Their moment of vindicating the Motherland had come, and when they achieved critic
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Autoren-Porträt von Lawrence Osborne
Lawrence Osborne
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Lawrence Osborne
- 2022, 256 Seiten, Maße: 14,4 x 21,3 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 0593242327
- ISBN-13: 9780593242322
- Erscheinungsdatum: 29.07.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Osborne is the bard of modern-day expat noir, and in On Java Road he s outdone himself, packing the usual preoccupations (estrangement, existential ennui, spiritual restlessness) in unceasingly compelling surroundings: Hong Kong in tumult . . . [bringing] together a story of privilege, wealth, passion, and loyalty, while also providing incisive cultural insights and full-blooded characters. Osborne s prose is as precise and observant as ever, and On Java Road is a novel that will leave readers shaken long after they ve finished reading. CrimeReadsThis winning mystery from Osborne . . . makes a city beset by unrest, countered by harsh repression, feel palpable, and the dynamic between two college friends of different socioeconomic backgrounds will remind many of Brideshead Revisited. Those patient enough to wait for the mystery plotline to kick in will be rewarded. Publishers Weekly
An atmospheric thriller set in a Hong Kong convulsed by student protests . . . The book is like a whodunit turned inside out. . . . Hong Kong comes fiercely alive on the page, and Osborne s command of complex history, geography, and politics (and poetry) is nuanced and sure-handed. . . . Moody and compelling. Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Lawrence Osborne
A startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice. Katie Kitamura, The New York Times Book Review
Unites Graham Greene s fondness for foreign soil with Patricia Highsmith s fascination with the nastier coils of the human psyche . . . What makes Osborne s work so compelling is that it s ruthlessly unpredictable. NPR
Mr. Osborne has a keen and sometimes cruel eye for humans and their manners and morals. . . . Surprising and dark and excellent. The New York Times
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