Hong Kong International Literary Festival 2014

Hong Kong Lit Fest 2014 gets underway from October 31st to November 9th…a few events of possible interest to China Rhymers….

November 5th – Frank Dikotter will be talking about China immediately post-1949 – The Tragedy of Liberation

Following the critically acclaimed Mao’s Great Famine, Frank Dikötter’s latest book The Tragedy of Liberation is the second in a planned trilogy about the history of China under Mao Zedong, making use of new archival evidence to look at the first decade of the People’s Republic of China. The book, nominated for the Orwell Prize, was declared by the South China Morning Post to be “essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature and history of the communist state.” In this session, Frank Dikötter will take us into a profoundly dark period of Chinese history.

November 6th – Mark O’Neill will be talking about his history of the Coolie Corps in WW1 – The Chinese Labour Corps

During WWI, tens of thousands of Chinese labourers travelled to Europe to work both on the war front and on the home front. They return to China at the end of the conflict but their brave contributions have been largely ignored in histories of the war to end all wars. In his concise book The Chinese Labour Corps, part of Penguin’s series on WWI in China, O’Neill explores this overlooked chapter in the history of the First World War.