The Drunkard: A Novel by Liu Yichang
The Drunkard is one of the first full-length stream-of-consciousness novels written in Chinese. It has been called the Hong Kong novel, and was first published in 1962 as a serial in a Hong Kong evening paper. As the unnamed Narrator, a writer at odds with a philistine world, sinks to his drunken nadir, his plight can be seen to represent that of a whole intelligentsia, a whole culture, degraded by the brutal forces of history: the Second Sino-Japanese War and the rampant capitalism of postwar Hong Kong.
The often surrealistic description of the Narrator’s inexorable descent through the seedy bars and nightclubs of Hong Kong, of his numerous encounters with dance-girls and his ever more desperate bouts of drinking, is counterpointed by a series of wide-ranging literary essays, analysing the Chinese classical tradition, the popular culture of China and the West, and the modernist movement in Western and Chinese literature.
The ambiance of Hong Kong in the early 1960s is graphically evoked in this powerful and poignant novel, which takes the reader to the very heart of Hong Kong. Hong Kong director Freddie Wong made a fine film version of the novel in 2010.
From HONG KONG LITERATURE SERIES
Author
Liu Yichang•Translated by Charlotte Chun-lam Yiu• Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nick Hordern
ISBN
9789882371866
Publishing/Printing Date
2020-07-01
Type
Publisher
Category
Literature & Fiction
Award
Selected for 2021 Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
Type of Company
Publisher
Contact
Company Business/Copyright Contact Name
Michael Ginn
Title
Sales and Marketing Manager
Contact mail
Contact Number
(852) 39439806
Fax
(852) 26037355
Company Address
Lady Ho Tung Hall, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong
Company Website
cup.cuhk.edu.hk