Pragmatism rules the place. As globalisation becomes an issue, the place is the world, not just Hong Kong. In this new world, which appears to be built on the professedly liberal economic ideas that have underpinned the colony’s free-for-all, these immigrants to the place make their lives and make their fortunes in their own ways.
Still, there is a constant in that they can only succeed within the protective umbrella shade of bigger interests than their own. In a city state that grew out of an illicit and illegal trade in opium as British merchants and adventurers became international drug dealers to vulnerable China, people with wealth beyond measure push people around the chessboards of their interests, occasionally enthroning a pawn they might even have previously sacrificed.
As in A Debt To Pleasure, John Lanchester has us enter the world of an anti-hero. The character that drives events in Fragrant Harbour is but a name for most of the book. He is cold, calculating, and driven by raw, undiluted self-interest. In this he is perhaps no different from anyone else; it’s just that he is more successful at it, and thus less willing to risk that success.
He prevails. The emperor is far away. The mountains are high. In his case, he is the emperor and he owns the mountains. Power lives in pockets and, in a globalised economy, we are all immigrants, even in our homes.
What a superb book!
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