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Diamond Hill Kit Fan

Diamond Hill By Kit Fan

Diamond Hill by Kit Fan


£4.90
New RRP £14.99
Condition - Very Good
Only 1 left

Summary

Kit Fan's hard-hitting and exhilarating debut is a requiem for a disappearing city, and a meditation on powerlessness, religion, colonialism and displacement.

Diamond Hill Summary

Diamond Hill by Kit Fan

'A vivid, powerful portrait of a vanishing world' - David Nicholls, author of One Day & Sweet Sorrow

'Diamond Hill
breathes beauty . . . Kit Fan skilfully weaves a story of loss and of being lost; a story of tragic mistakes, which haunts the reader long after the final page has been turned' - Okechukwu Nzelu, author of The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney

Diamond Hill was once the 'Hollywood of the Orient', but is now an eyesore in the middle of a glitzy financial hub. Buddhist nuns, drug gangs, property developers, the government and foreign powers are all vying for power, each wanting to stake their claim on the land.

Set in the last shanty town of Hong Kong before the fraught 1997 handover from Britain to China, Diamond Hill follows the return of a recovering heroin addict, Buddha, as he tries to salvage what's left from a place he hoped to forget.

Buddha finds himself crossing swords with the Iron Nun, fighting for her nunnery; a disturbed novice, Quartz, who is fleeing her past; a faded film actress called Audrey Hepburn; and Boss, a teenage gang leader with a big mouth and even bigger plans, plotting to escape what she calls 'the death of Hong Kong'.

Kit Fan's hard-hitting and exhilarating debut is a requiem for a disappearing city, and a meditation on powerlessness, religion, colonialism and displacement. It explores the price of forgetting and how the present is ultimately always entangled in the past.

Diamond Hill Reviews

Raw and authentic Hong Kong writing at its best. This book is exceptionally good -- Chris Thrall
An exhilarating and original tale, Diamond Hill marks award-winning Fan as a writer to watch * Cosmopolitan *
Kit Fan's admirable debut novel Diamond Hill gives us the heart and soul of Hong Kong. Fan captures, with profound empathy, the temporary and precarious nature of the city. His motley crew-a former heroin addict, Buddhist nuns and prostitutes who have fallen from grace, a teenage gangster girl who runs a triad drug operation, among others-inhabit their Kowloon village before time destroys it . . . Despite disappearance and destiny, memory preserves the city's past along with the Cantonese language in all its rich expressiveness and slang. We look forward to more from this author. -- XU XI, author of Habit of a Foreign Sky, The Unwalled City, Dear Hong Kong, Insignificance: Hong Kong Stories
Diamond Hill breathes beauty. Through quiet prose that speaks eloquently for itself, Kit Fan skilfully weaves a story of loss and of being lost; a story of tragic mistakes, which haunts the reader long after the final page has been turned -- Okechukwu Nzelu, author of The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney
Immediately engaging and dynamic and with an eye for an image that could only belong to a poet -- Andrew McMillan
A vivid, powerful portrait of a vanishing world -- David Nicholls
A rapid-fire debut with a cinematographer's eye for detail, Diamond Hill interrogates fate, memory and redemption at a filmic velocity befitting its setting in Hong Kong's former Hollywood. Fan strikes a deft balance between agile set-pieces and lingering beauty -- Naoise Dolan
The best debut I've read in ages . . . The beauty and ugliness of life continually jostle as Buddha tries and often fails to do the right thing. There is a glorious luminosity to the writing and the reading experience is rather like looking into a kaleidoscope and giving it several twirls. I am very keen on swearing and especially enjoyed the vigorous and earthy cursing and the fascinating note at the end on Cantonese slang and profanities -- Cathy Rentzenbrink
Fan creates a textured, unsettled portrait of a territory facing a decisive ending. The ethical conflict lies in whether to exploit the inevitable destruction . . . or commit to small, doomed acts of salvation. The dark drama that unfolds is an elegy to that vanished vanishing world * Wall Street Journal *

About Kit Fan

Kit Fan was born in Hong Kong and moved to the UK at the age of 21. In 2017 and 2018 he was shortlisted for the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize for 'Duty Free' and 'City of Culture'. He was shortlisted for the TLS Mick Imlah Poetry Prize 2017. His first book of poems Paper Scissors Stone won the inaugural HKU International Poetry Prize in 2011 and his translation of Classical Chinese poetry won one of the Times Stephen Spender Prizes in 2006. He studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong before completing a PhD on Thom Gunn at the University of York. His second book of poems As Slow As Possible was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018. He lives and works in York.

Additional information

GOR011521310
9780349701707
0349701709
Diamond Hill by Kit Fan
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Little, Brown Book Group
20210513
352
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Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Diamond Hill