SOURCE: “China Syndrome,” in The New Republic, Vol. 196, No. 19, May 11, 1987, pp. 39-41.

In the following review, Buruma discusses the metaphorical motifs and characteristic features of Mo's style in An Insular Possession.

What will happen after 1997? This is the first thing people ask when one tells them that one lives in Hong Kong. It is not the sort of question posed about any other place. Who knows what will happen in 1997 in New York, Delhi, or Tokyo? But in no other place is the future tied to a specific date, to a formal agreement that a modern capitalist colony will be handed over to a troubled Communist state. Nor can one think of any other major city whose origin can be so clearly traced to a date. In the case of Hong Kong, the date is August 29, 1842, when the island was ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Nanking...