“The best book about the indelible city to date. Irresistibly real and emotionally authentic, it shines with a shimmering light rarely seen in political narrative. A truly extraordinary elegy.”

– Ai Weiwei

AWARDS & PRIZES

THE STELLA PRIZE - SHORTLIST

THE PRIME MINISTER’S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION - SHORTLIST
THE WALKLEY BOOK AWARD - SHORTLIST
 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION - SHORTLIST
QUEENSLAND LITERARY AWARD FOR NON-FICTION - SHORTLIST

OVERSEAS PRESS CLUB OF AMERICA CORNELIUS RYAN AWARD CITATION

INDELIBLE CITY: DISPOSESSION AND DEFIANCE IN HONG KONG

An award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger indelibly captures the place, its people, and the untold history they are claiming, just as it is being erased.

The story of Hong Kong has long been dominated by competing myths: to Britain, a ‘barren rock’ with no appreciable history; to China, a part of Chinese soil from time immemorial, at last returned to the ancestral fold. For decades, its history was simply not taught, especially to Hong Kongers, obscuring its origins as a place of refuge and rebellion.

When protests erupted in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Lim —raised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who has covered the region for more than a decade—realized that she was uniquely positioned to unearth Hong Kong’s untold stories. Learn More ⟶

  • “An utterly brilliant and original ode to Hong Kong, throbbing with eccentricity and sense of place. Like Joseph Mitchell’s singular rendering of New York, Lim’s Hong Kong will be read decades from now as an indelible portrait.”

    — Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition, winner of the National Book Award

  • “I absolutely loved this book. Each page is a revelation about a city whose history I thought I knew well. Lim’s exploration of Hong Kong’s identity is insightful, refreshing and entirely original.”

    — Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha

  • “I read Louisa Lim’s book slowly, haunted by memories and stymied by sorrow. An archaeological dig into the disappearing present, her fascinating and heartbreaking account reveals an indelible history hidden in plain sight, and a future that Hong Kong’s unique sensibility promises even as the world’s most powerful autocracy strives to erase it.”

    — Geremie Barmé, editor of China Heritage

Photo: Laura Du Vé

Louisa Lim is an award-winning journalist who reported from China for a decade for NPR and the BBC.

Her first book, The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited , was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Helen Bernstein Prize for Excellence in Journalism. She co-hosts The Little Red Podcast, an award-winning podcast on China. She works as an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne, teaching audio journalism and podcasting, and has a PhD in journalism studies. Her latest book, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, will be released in April 2022 from Penguin Random House.