Last year in Hong Kong

the long version

Robert Elegant returns to the setting he knows better than any other living novelist - Hong Kong - with this beautifully crafted love story set in the fateful closing months before the handover of the territory to China. Newly divorced and relieved to be free of the husband who embodied all the worst characteristics of Hong Kong, Lucretia Barnes is filled with doubts about her ability to love again, and is wary of any new relationship. But the thirty-two-year-old American is captivated when she meets Robbie, the extraordinarily handsome and charming son of an English mother and a Tibetan father. Coming from different backgrounds and cultures, they experience the powerful attraction of opposites. Robbie is utterly different from the closed-minded money-mad crowd of which Lucretia was once part - but now despises. As Robbie sets out to show Lucretia his Hong Kong, the real Hong Kong, it seems that nothing can touch the happiness that envelops them. They cover the city by bus and by foot, exhilarated by their discovery of each other and mesmerized by what they see. But as their relationship deepens, so does their unspoken fear that their time together will be brief. The ominous future looming over this unique corner of the world shadows their happiness. Building to a dramatic conclusion, this powerful and compelling novel is full of danger and intrigue and love that transcends all borders.