The Borrowed

"The novel spans half a century. We start with meeting the two detectives in 2013, and then you go backwards in time (as far as 1967) to meet their younger selves and see how what happened in the past informed what happened in the future. The novel encompasses a number of classic detective stories that play with the conventions of the genre: there’s a starlet falling from a bridge to her death, a kidnapping, rival gangs, the 1967 riots against the colonial government. It shows how Hong Kong evolved from a city rife with corruption to one of the least corrupt places in the world. And there’s also a dimension of social commentary: during the colonial era, many higher-ranked policemen were white men. It’s a page-turner. It’s a thick book—a block, basically—but I couldn’t put it down. It draws you in with all its twists and turns, and its powerful sense of momentum. The Borrowed has won major awards in Japan and Taiwan and been translated into over a dozen languages. And of course, you know a book’s made it when Wong Kar-wai buys the movie rights."