Shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize, Hong Kong writer Timothy Mo's lively debut has retained all its freshness, humour and wonderful characterisation. There are two novels here: the main story concerns a young Chinese couple of vastly contrasting personalities attempting to make sense of marriage and parenthood, while another, darker narrative exposes the menacing underworld of crime Asian-style. Mo is a fine writer, as is evident from his two subsequent Booker contenders, An Insular Possession and The Redundancy of Courage - the latter based on the tragedy of East Timor. Having lived in England for 20 years, he has now returned to Hong Kong. But before leaving Britain, he achieved the unmentionable - he dumped not only his publishers, but publishers in general and set up his own imprint, Paddleless, which published his last two novels. The reissuing of his first novel is timely: it not only gives this excellent book a second life, it shows that the young Mo was an unusually natural novelist, and that the hardworking, ambitious Lily Chen, one of his most convincing creations, also remains his most likeable.
