Hong Kong novelist Hon Lai Chu has released two books in turn this year—a collection of short stories, Embroidery on the Skin, and a collection of essays, Darkness under the Sun—which steadfastly illuminate the necessity and possibilities of memories and the perception of pain. In this Artist’s Choice event*, we will invite Hon Lai Chu to share with us a novel which has been impactful to her: The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The writer will read for us passages from the book and speak from there about cities, collapse, relationships, and writing.
“I sometimes wonder if I had not come across The Unbearable Lightness of Being in the library when I was 15 (I did not even know who Milan Kundera was back then), whose book would I reread during the slumps I have had time after time after that? When I had no idea how to carry on, which fictional scenes would come to mind? I have lost count of how many times I have re-read this book since I was 15—from Tomáš to Sabina, from a time of turmoil to one of the mundane, and from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic back then to Hong Kong today.” — Hon Lai Chu
*The event will be conducted in Cantonese, with simultaneous interpretation from Cantonese to English available.
