Every year, no matter the climate, there are books of the season. There are beach reads – pulpy, unserious and intended to be finished in a few sittings, typically summer romances, crime novels or celebrity memoirs – and then there are autumn reads, books to complement falling temperatures, back-to-school blues and Halloween.
The Hong Kong summer is finally winding down, and it’s time for books that unsettle and disturb, books with a touch of melancholy, and books to wash down with a warm drink while looking forward to sweater weather.
A “best books to read in autumn” list on Goodreads, with more than 800 titles, recommends Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1817). But we’re looking closer to home, with a selection of titles by Hong Kong writers and Asian diasporic works you can sink into over the next weeks of seasonal and mental shifts.Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022)Kim Fu
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, by Kim Fu. Photo: Handout
Collections of short fiction are often a mix of wondrous stories that change your life slipped in between instantly forgettable ones. But there are few weak pieces in this book by Kim Fu, who was born in Canada to Hong Kong parents and uses all pronouns (he/she/they). The magical realism and horror themes in the book have earned Fu comparisons to Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties (2017), but Fu’s strongest stories are the ones that simply explore the unknowability of other humans.
In “#ClimbingNation”, a protagonist crashes the memorial service of an influencer and learns of the deadly plans the deceased man’s sister has devised for his friends. In “Twenty Hours”, a couple repeatedly kills each other, mostly with consent, to buy some much-needed alone time. But the stand-out story is the first, a Black Mirror-esque tale that takes the form of a chat transcript between a person seeking to be placed in a simulation with their dead mother and an operator who has to ban the request because such experiences are addictive and can lead to lawsuits. (“I can f*** a dragon, but I can’t see my mom?” the prospective client asks incredulously.)
Speak Still (2025)Wing Lam Tong
Speak Still, written by Wing Lam Tong. Photo: courtesy 404ink