In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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                        A distinct perspective upon colonial life.

In this compelling memoir of his colonial childhood in Hong Kong in the 1950s, Martin Booth writes from his child’s perspective of the years where he was able to roam freely around the streets of Hong Kong. Filled with an enormous curiosity about the exotic and colourful world around him, Martin quickly gains a grasp of pidgin-Cantonese and uses it to roam the streets and gain access to some of the most colourful parts of Hong Kong, including opium dens, the headquarters of ruthless criminals and a leper colony. In honouring a promise that he makes early on to a British naval officer, seven-year-old Martin tries every food that is offered to him, among them snakes, one hundred-year-old eggs and boiled water beetles. Martin’s adventures are thrown into relief by the volatile backdrop of his warring parents. Martin’s mother, like her son, was open to the Chinese culture which she embraced along with its people. By contrast Martin’s father was an irascible bully of a man whose failure to progress in the navy had left him with a bitterness that he took out on his family. Booth takes us on a journey through Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life through the innocent eyes of a child.

Reviews

• ‘Booth must rank as a giant of modern English letters … This sunny, luminous account of a very special time.’ — Time Magazine

• ‘GWEILO is admirably evocative of the noise and bustle of Hong Kong half a century ago.’ — Sunday Times

• ‘Highly evocative … As a sharp-eyed, sensitive child of a vanished Hong Kong, Booth earns his nostalgia.’ — Daily Telegraph

• ‘One of the most original and engaging memoirs of recent years … Personal, witty and true.’ — The Times

• ‘Wonderful memoir … it has such pace and power … There are some great comic moments too.’ — Sunday Telegraph

• ‘His finest work. Full of local colour and packed with incident.’ — Evening Standard

The Author: Martin Booth is internationally known as a writer and biographer. His penultimate book was CANNABIS: A HISTORY. An acclaimed novelist, his THE INDUSTRY OF SOULS was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998. When he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2002 he was inspired to delve into his Hong Kong childhood and write GWEILO, and he died shortly after completing the manuscript in February 2004.

Martin Booth (7 September 1944 – 12 February 2004) was an English novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press. Martin Booth was born in Lancashire England, the son of Joyce and Ken Booth, the latter of whom was a Royal Navy civil servant. Martin has said that his parents had a difficult marriage, as his father was stern, pompous, and humourless, while his mother was adventurous, witty, and sociable. The family moved to Hong Kong in May 1952, where his father was stationed for a three-year tour as a grocery supplier to the British Navy. In his memoir “Gweilo: A memoir of a Hong Kong Childhood” Booth recalls that the streets of Hong Kong were safe, and he would explore the city alone as a child. He encountered things he was unfamiliar with: dogs hung in a butcher shop, an impoverished family living in a packing crate, and a Russian refugee who claimed to be the missing Russian princess Anastasia. People would touch his blond hair for good luck. He and his mother also learned Cantonese. He attended Kowloon Junior School, the Peak School, then King George V School, and left in 1964. From 1965 to 1968 he attended Trent Park College of Education in Cockfosters, North London, part of what is now Middlesex University. His main subject was science, and he obtained the Certificate of Education.