Set in the long-lost City of Victoria (a fictional world similar to Hong Kong), Atlas is written from the unified perspective of future archaeologists struggling to rebuild a thrilling metropolis. Divided into four sections—"Theory," "The City," "Streets," and "Signs"—the novel reimagines Victoria through maps and other historical documents and artifacts, mixing real-world scenarios with purely imaginary people and events while incorporating anecdotes and actual and fictional social commentary and critique.
Much like the quasi-fictional adventures in map-reading and remapping explored by Paul Auster, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, Dung Kai-cheung's novel challenges the representation of place and history and the limits of technical and scientific media in reconstructing a history. It best exemplifies the author's versatility and experimentation, along with China's rapidly evolving literary culture, by blending fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a story about succeeding and failing to recapture the things we lose. Playing with a variety of styles and subjects, Dung Kai-cheung inventively engages with the fate of Hong Kong since its British "handover" in 1997, which officially marked the end of colonial rule and the beginning of an uncharted future.
- Table of Contents
- Preface: An Archaeology for the Future
- Introduction
- PART ONE: THEORY
- 1. Counterplace
- 2. Commonplace
- 3. Misplace
- 4. Displace
- 5. Antiplace
- 6. Nonplace
- 7. Extraterritoriality
- 8. Boundary
- 9. Utopia
- 10. Supertopia
- 11. Subtopia
- 12. Transtopia
- 13. Multitopia
- 14. Unitopia
- 15. Omnitopia
- PART TWO: THE CITY
- 16. Mirage: City in the Sea
- 17. Mirage: Towers in the Air
- 18. Pottinger's Inverted Vision
- 19. Gordon's Jail
- 20. "Plan of the City of Victoria," 1889
- 21. The Four Wan and the Nine Yeuk
- 22. The Centaur of the East
- 23. Scandal Point and the Military Cantonment
- 24. Mr. Smith's One-Day Trip
- 25. The View from Government House
- 26. The Toad of Belcher's Dream
- 27. The Return of Kwan Tai Loo
- 28. The Curse of Tai Ping Shan
- 29. War Game
- PART THREE: STREETS
- 30. Spring Garden Lane
- 31. Ice House Street
- 32. Sugar Street
- 33. Tsat Tsz Mui Road
- 34. Canal Road East and Canal Road West
- 35. Aldrich Street
- 36. Possession Street
- 37. Sycamore Street
- 38. Tung Choi Street and Sai Yeung Choi Street
- 39. Sai Yee Street
- 40. Public Square Street
- 41. Cedar Street
- PART FOUR: SIGNS
- 42. The Decline of the Legend
- 43. The Eye of the Typhoon
- 44. Chek Lap Kok Airport
- 45. The Metonymic Spectrum
- 46. The Elevation of Imagination
- 47. Geological Discrimination
- 48. North-Oriented Declination
- 49. The Travel of Numbers
- 50. The Tomb of Signs
- 51. The Orbit of Time
- Acknowledgments
- Author & Translators
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