HKU Library Book Talk - That Man in Our Lives
posted by University Libraries for HKU and Public
Event Type: Other Event/Function
Event Nature: Culture and Arts

That Man in Our Lives
Speaker: Ms Xu Xi
Moderator: Dr Stacilee Ford, HKU
Date: 23 March 2017 (Thursday)
Time: 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Venue: Special Collections, 1/F, Main Library, The University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Registration: http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2017_02.html
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

About the Speaker
XU XI 許素細 www.xuxiwriter.com is author of eleven books, most recently the novel That Man In Our Lives (C&R Press, September 2016); Interruptions (Hong Kong University Museum & Art Gallery,/Columbia Univ. Press, September, 2016), a collaborative ekphrastic essay collection in conversation with photography by David Clarke; Habit of a Foreign Sky (Haven Books, 2010), a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize; the story collection Access Thirteen Tales (Signal 8 Press, 2011). Forthcoming books include; a memoir Elegy for HK (Penguin, March/April 2017) and Insignificance: Stories of Hong Kong (Signal 8 Press, 2018). She has also edited four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English. Since 2002, she has taught for low-residency MFA programs including at Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA where she was elected and served as faculty chair, and at City University of Hong Kong where she was appointed Writer-in-Residence and founded and directed Asia’s first and only low-residency MFA. From January to May, 2016, she was Distinguished Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Arizona State University’s Virginia G. Piper Center of Creative Writing. She is co-founder, with author Robin Hemley, of Authors At Large, offering international writing retreats and workshops. An Indonesian-Chinese Hong Kong native and U.S. citizen, she currently lives between New York and Hong Kong. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram @xuxiwriter.

About the Book
THAT MAN IN OUR LIVES released in September by C&R Press in the U.S. has quickly generated positive buzz. Long awaited by Xu Xi’s fans and readers worldwide, this latest work by the international novelist extends the universe of her earlier books, with New York as the perch from which she examines the shifting balance of power between the U.S. and China. This tale of lifelong friendships features Gordon (Gordie) Ashberry, a wealthy, dilettante Sinologist – a.k.a. Gord or Hui Guo 灰果 to his two closest friends Harold Haight and Larry Woo – a character in three of Xu’s earlier novels. The story opens in March 2003 when Gordie deliberately disappears during a flight delay in Tokyo. The pre and post fallout around that disappearance informs this drama about the friend who was always around in your and your family’s lives until he isn’t, and how much or little we know of those we think we know well. Originally inspired by John Adam’s opera “Nixon in China,” a large cast of characters traverses the globe in search of this missing protagonist, a Gatsby-ish figure with Chinese characteristics. That Man in Our Lives is Xu’s metafictional response to the Chinese classic novel Dreams of Red Chambers by Cao Xueqin.

About the Moderator
Dr Stacilee Ford is an Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of History and the American Studies Program at The University of Hong Kong. She is a cultural historian whose work focuses on the intersection of gender, generation, ethnicity, national identity, and culture. Published works include, Troubling American Women: Gender and National Identity in Hong Kong and Mabel Cheung Yuen-Ting’s “An Autumn’s Tale.” She has taught and written about Xu Xi and her work since the mid-1990s.

Admission: Free
HKUL Website: http://lib.hku.hk/
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Date/Time 23/03/2017 18:30-20:00 Venue Special Collections, 1/F Main Library Building Language English

Please register on-line

For registration, please visit: http://lib.hku.hk/friends/reading_club/bt2017_02.html