SOURCE: “Here Be Many Dragons,” in Manchester Guardian Weekly, Vol. 152, No. 19, May 7, 1995, p. 28.

In the following review, Tyrrell provides a succinct account of the satirical quality in Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard.

Timothy Mo’s first novel, Sour Sweet, a fine satire about a Hong Kong family, introduced us to the rich Poons, lunching on three fried eggs, their amahs sleeping in the kitchen, spittoons in each room, and their every word part of the Chinese politics of status or “face”. Underneath Mo’s wit and compact narration was a telling critique of a claustrophobic Chinese society. It was a world that Mo, born of Cantonese and English parents, would enlarge in successive novels.

The latest brings us to the Philippines, where one called Victoria Init is building a dazzling conference centre, The Dragons. Mrs Init, the wife of a politician, is a provincial Imelda Marcos, formidable and deceptive...