The Lost Century, Larissa Lai
The Lost Century, Larissa Lai
4 Rating(s)
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
Club: $10.99

The Lost Century

Author: Larissa Lai

Narrator: Caroline McLaughlin

Unabridged: 11 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2022


Synopsis

The latest novel by Larissa Lai (The Tiger Flu): an epic yet intimate story set during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II.
Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (The Tiger Flu) returns with a sprawling historical novel about war, colonialism and queer experience during Japan’s occupation of Hong Kong during World War II.
On the eve of the return of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997, young Ophelia asks her peculiar great-aunt Violet about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II and the disappearance of her uncle Theo. From Violet, she learns the story of her grandmother, Emily.
Emily’s marriage—three times—to her father’s mortal enemy causes a stir among three very different Hong Kong Chinese families, as well as among the young cricketers at the Hong Kong Cricket Club, who’ve just witnessed King Edward VIII’s abdication to marry Wallis Simpson. But the class and race pettiness of the scandal around Emily’s marriage is violently disrupted by the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Hong Kong on Christmas Day, 1941, which plunges the colony into a landscape of violence none of its inhabitants escape from unscathed, least of all Emily. When her situation becomes dire, Violet, along with a crew of unlikely cosmopolitans determines to rescue Emily from the wrath of the person she thought loved her the most, her husband, Tak-Wing. In the middle of it all, a strange match of timeless Test cricket unfolds, in which the ball has an agency all its own.
With great heart, The Lost Century explores the intersections of Asian relations, queer Asian history, underground resistance, the violence of war, and the rise of modern China? a sprawling novel of betrayal, epic violence and intimate passions.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Fraser on November 09, 2022

Ophelia’s Great Aunt Violet sits down with her for a meal on the day of the 1977 handover ceremony transferring Hong Kong from British governance to China. Chronicling about a decade, from 1932 to ‘42ish, Violet recounts how two feuding families’ fates become entangled, as both houses struggle to fi......more

Goodreads review by maia on January 02, 2023

ramble/review: this was a very interesting read even though it took me forever to get through. lai uses a lot of second person and experiments (for lack of a better word?) with the idea of memory and oral storytelling as unreliable but necessary conveyors of trauma, both in an individual sense and a......more

Goodreads review by Elena on February 19, 2023

"My generation endured so yours wouldn't have to." 1997, on the eve of the return of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to China - Ophelia and her great-aunt Violet are waiting for the food in a restaurant when Ophelia asks her about the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during WWII, the disappea......more

Goodreads review by Bella on November 24, 2023

This was really good! Also very long. I knew like nothing about the history of Hong Kong going into this so it was very interesting. My brain hurts from reading it so fast.......more

Goodreads review by Courtney on September 27, 2023

[4.5 stars, rounded up to 5] “But all pasts are only dreams, unless you have a real way of making them present.” Larissa Lai’s THE LOST CENTURY is a truly powerful work of historical fiction that I don’t see much on here, but I’d love for more folks to dig into it. THE LOST CENTURY follows two Hong Kon......more