The Kowloon English Club. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.The Kowloon English Club

Asia, 1996, What do you do when you have failed to find the meaning of life in India, your money has run out, your girlfriend has gone, and prospects at home are limited? Head further East young man! Meet Joe Walsh, a young backpacker who is determined to put a wayward life behind him and make it big in Hong Kong, where fortune still favours the British and opportunities are there for the taking. Almost immediately Joe is presented with a fresh lease of life: discovering one of the world’s most exciting cities, finding challenging new jobs, making friends with an extraordinary cast of characters, and dating local women. But, as personal relationships sour and the pressures of long hours teaching on minimum pay, classroom clashes and abject living conditions mount, Joe is forced to confront people he wished he’d never met, face hazards that are not signposted, and answer important questions that cannot be put off a moment longer. The story is set during the final full year of British-ruled Hong Kong when tourists, hordes of ex-pat and transient workers were exploiting the economy as well as the occasion, with the dominant expressions of that time: celebration, nostalgia and (local) unease lived and told by a young, newly-arrived backpacker named Joe Walsh. Arriving virtually penniless, with issues in love and life, he determines to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But first he finds himself absorbed into a vibrant social scene through the communal existence of hostel life, where drink, drugs and casual sex are a way of life. A stint selling sandwiches gives way to an English-teaching job, when he can at last start to live out his ambitions. In doing so, he chronicles the problems faced by a novice teacher, the difficulty of dealing with uncooperative classes, and his relationships with students and other teachers. How he how he reconciles the attitudes of Eastern conservatism against Western liberalism, are themes explored not only from Joe’s perspective but also those of his colleagues. Joe records their motivations, aspirations, prejudices and flaws, and in some cases, their dire outcomes. His own personal relationships also feature strongly, in which he discovers the linguistic and cultural issues around dating local women, and one in particular, who charms him from their first classroom meeting. But when Joe’s head is turned by a prettier and more sophisticated young Asian woman, things are about to get messy. An already stressful existence worsens after a night out goes wrong and Joe is forced to take stock on his new life. With job satisfaction at a teaching sweatshop dwindling by the day, life in a putrid, cockroach and ex-pat trash infested hostel becoming unbearable, and now being hounded by a beautiful, psychotic woman with a potentially dangerous secret, something has to give.