Original title:
日常運動
Original language:
Complex Chinese
Publication info:
ECUS Cultural Enterprise
6 January 2022
366 pages in Complex Chinese
Genre:
Literary fiction
Rights handled by New River:
Foreign rights excl. Asia
Rights sold:
WEL (Riverhead/PRH US)
Everyday Movement
by Gigi Leung Lee-chi
Finalist for the 2022 Taipei Literary Award
Hong Kong, 2019. A city hanging in the balance, with the world’s attention fixed on it. As explosive demonstrations rage against the government, a young woman in a university dormitory applies eyeliner, getting ready to go out. She chats with her roommate: food, clothes, part-time jobs…water contaminated by tear gas, phones smashed during violent protest.
Composed of ten chapters that interrelate in a manner reminiscent of David Szalay’s works, and with each connecting to a university student called Panda, Everyday Movement depicts the hopes, desires, hesitations, anger, and despair of a generation of Hong Kongers as the capitalist metropolis becomes a battleground of both violence and ideology – the clash of a population’s personal and political lives, and the struggle for a city’s soul in the midst of its disintegration. Told with sharp insight and a tender touch, it brings to mind novels such as Garth Risk Hallberg’s City on Fire and Ryan Gattis’ All Involved with its kaleidoscopic yet granular picture of a changing city – and the everyday effects on those inhabiting it.
About the author
Gigi Leung Lee-chi (1995-) is one of Hong Kong’s youngest award-winning authors. A graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she is currently an MFA student at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Her work includes the story collections, The One Who Lives On the Safety Island and Bright As It Is, as well as poetry collection Staticky Specimen. Her 2022 novel Everyday Movement was a finalist for the Taipei Literary Award; she also won TSMC Literary Award. Her story Empty Rooms was published in Two Lines Journal, and her second novel, The Melancholy of Trees, was published in April 2023.