SOURCE: “On the Edge of History,” in Far Eastern Economic Review, September 18, 1986, pp. 60-61.

In the following review, Wilson describes the stylistic qualities of Mo’s prose in An Insular Possession while also presenting an account of the novel's plot and setting.

Timothy Mo’s long-awaited new novel, five years in the making, begins with a lyrical description of the Pearl River and the city of Canton which will demand inclusion in any future treasury of modern English prose. This is Mo at his best, using language as a fluent conveyor of all the eye can see, the ear can hear, the mind can imagine—language lean yet poetic, down-to-earth yet conscious of the sky.

After that we have something more difficult: an attempt to recreate some of the life along, upon and beside that river in the years of the Opium War when dynamic British and decadent...