Hong Kong

Golden Boy, by Martin Booth (2004). Imagine Tom Sawyer. Now place this rambunctious youth in the lively streets of Hong Kong in the 1950s, and savor the mischief that ensues. This is the experience of reading Martin Booth's memoir. In addition to the rickshaws and street monkeys, the young Booth discovers Hong Kong's more sinister underbelly as he befriends a local mobster and tours an opium den. Beneath the action on the streets are the cultural tensions embodied by Booth's parents, who disagree over how to raise a white child in an Asian country.

*Hong Kong, by Jan Morris (1989). The ever-piquant Morris masterfully unravels the enigma that is Hong Kong, from its Sino-British bipolarity to its megalithic economic structure, its hypercrowded urban landscape to its surprisingly under-explored nature reserves.

The Li Dynasty, by Frank Ching (1999). The story of one of Hong Kong's most prominent families starts from the patriarch's arrival in Hong Kong through the family's rise in the city's shipping and banking sectors. The author recounts how generations of Li Shek-pang's descendants have branched into the fields of law, politics, and civic service.

Kowloon Tong, by Paul Theroux (1997). In this novel set in the waning years of British rule over Hong Kong, a young British man wrestles with his fate and that of the city.

Shopping for Buddhas, by Jeff Greenwald (1996). On a quest in Kathmandu for the perfect statue of Buddha, writer Jeff Greenwald describes his adventures—with a flying lama, an electrocuted crow, and Kathmandu's first escalator—with humor and a traveler's eye. He yields insight into Nepalese religion and art, yet doesn't shy away from mentioning the smuggling and human rights abuses that plague the country as well.

White Ghost Girls, by Alice Greenway (2006). This debut novel tells the story of two sisters' coming of age in Hong Kong during the summer of 1967. The girls enjoy the simple life of Pok Fu Lam village, collecting sea urchins from the harbor and playing in bamboo gardens. The tranquility of these lush landscapes is disrupted, however, when the Maoist revolution moves close to home, and the girls experience firsthand turmoil that they had previously known only through photographs.