Journalist Lim's account casts new light on key moments in Hong Kong's history: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Features guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archaeologists and others who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the center of their own story.
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 a people oppressed by British colonialism and suppressed by communist China yet determined in their pursuit of freedom and cultural identity.
... this is an unapologetically personal book ... The engine for this vivid, loving book is Lim’s insistent questioning — her recognition that whatever comes next for Hong Kong will require not only fortitude but also willful acts of imagination.
... dismantles the received wisdom about Hong Kong’s history and replaces it with an engaging, exhaustively researched account of its long struggle for sovereignty ... Throughout this colonial history Lim sprinkles vivid details that underscore the racism and 'willful disregard' with which Britain governed its last major colony.
