Category Archives: Fiction

A Cycle of Stories from the I Ching – The Book of Changes

The Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, is one of the oldest and strangest of all books, a masterpiece of world literature, a divination manual and a magnet for the deranged and the obsessive. In Sixty-Four Chance Pieces, novelist and philosopher Will Buckingham puts the I Ching to work, using it to weave together sixty-four stories of chance and change, each flowing from one of the I Ching’s 64 hexagrams. Moving between myth, fable and travel-writing, Sixty-Four Chance Pieces offers an attempt to make sense of the maddening, changeable book that is the I Ching with tales of inventors and fox-spirits, ancient poets and non-existent rulers, kleptomaniac pensioners and infernal bureaucrats. Like the I Ching itself, this new Book of Changes is a puzzle, a conundrum and a journey of many transformations, where nothing is quite what it seems.

Press Release

Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang review June 2015

Asia Review of Books review July 2015

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A novel by Nick Macfie

An English girl with a Chinese father gets caught up in the illegal gambling business. A benevolent gangster kills a dodgy dealer with a bow and arrow. It’s Christmas in Hong Kong and journalist Hadley Arnold, king of the cynical hacks, is in trouble again.

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Christopher New

Hong Kong’s demi-monde at the height of the British Empire… Franziska Goldmann, an opera singer fallen on hard times, has become the star courtesan in 19th century Hong Kong. A chance encounter with Queen Victoria’s musical second son seems to offer Franziska an opportunity to resume her career as a singer. But it is the other unpredictable characters in her life, including her German anarchist lover and a devious procurer, who may ultimately determine her destiny. The haunting story of a lone woman’s struggle to escape her fate, Gage Street Courtesan unfolds against the ironically observed background of colonial society, from the waterfront brothels to the mansions of the rich.

“The magic of this book lies in the many accounts given by many characters; what they are doing and thinking are revealed in parallel in a fashion similar to that of a split-frame in a film. In this way, they reveal their shady pasts, their present schemes and desires and their wishful hopes, a little at a time… Here is a big round of applause for the beautiful balance of sound historical research and the frightfully vivid imagination which make up this fictional Hong Kong, once upon a time.”

Review from Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (March 2014)

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Ulrich Bear

Delving deep into China’s great transformation, this moving collection of stories probes the hearts of everyday individuals caught up in the country’s rapid economic development. Told with tenderness and emotional acuity, these stories introduce us to a heartbroken taxi driver, a love-struck middle-aged mother, a courageous cutting-edge designer, a drifting waiter, a Tai Chi instructor down on her luck, and a young American in search of himself. They are all denizens of China’s most vibrant city – Shanghai, united by the universal longing to feel connected, to be known, and to love and be loved.

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Nick Macfie

British journalist Hadley Arnold, based in Hong Kong, is employed by a mysterious American “casting agent” to help destroy the reputation of an actor tipped to become the next James Bond. With only his questionable ethics and worse instincts to guide him, his quest takes him from sleazy bars in Hong Kong to deadly beaches in Sri Lanka. It’s a tough job. Even for the man with the golden quote.

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