“Matthew Wong Foreman's Sunset at Lion Rock is a virtuosic, kaleidoscopic insider's tale of Hong Kong--a Hong Kong of liminal spaces following the British handover and the city's uncertain future, a Hong Kong of both wildness and wilderness, a Hong Kong as seen through the eyes of a boy only the colonialism and multiculturalism of Hong Kong could create. It is also an account of family, of a boy raised by a matriarchy of heartbreaks, reckoning with one of the most raw and authentic coming-of-age experiences I have read in literature. This is a richly rewarding book I'd recommend to anyone seeking a contemporary voice from Hong Kong to better understand a city seemingly perpetually at the crossroads of history.”

--Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

“Writing is how we understand why we belong to the world in Matthew Wong Foreman’s debut novel. From a young age, Eric, a Eurasian boy growing up in Hong Kong in a Buddhist household with his single mother and grandmother, narrativizes his existence, believing himself to be the reincarnation of an uncle who died before his birth. Spanning from the eve of the 1997 Hong Kong handover to the Hong Kong protests, Sunset at Lion Rock captures the voices of a city whose rich history haunts its present—from days of glamour shaped by the lore of Bruce Lee and Leslie Cheung to the smoky snooker halls of Sham Shui Po. Multi-tonal and searching, this debut positions writing itself as ‘the language of salvation.’ This is a book that I wish, growing up here in Hong Kong, I’d had with me.”

—Sheung-King, Author of Batshit Seven, Winner of the 2024 Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize

“A novel so visceral and full-bodied that I half-expected the spine to bleed as I gripped its pages. Matthew Wong Foreman writes of Hong Kong like it’s a beloved, troubled family member: with a real urgency and learned patience, with the kind of fierce love that curls into hate around the edges. This is a novel about alienation that left me feeling utterly human.”

—Connie Wang, author of Oh My Mother!: A Memoir in Nine Adventures

“Lyrical, restrained and deeply felt, Sunset at Lion Rock explores identity and memory in the shadow of history. A striking debut of uncommon grace.”

—Emma Pei Yin, author of When Sleeping Women Wake

“With its stark and piercing prose, Matthew Wong Foreman’s debut novel rises far beyond the usual fare of a mixed-race memoir. It’s also a history of Hong Kong, and what it feels like to be a single family made and made bereft by the city’s changes. Foreman refuses to look away from the contradictions and pain of this family. The portrait he paints is complex, moving, and real.”

—Belinda Huijuan Tang, author of A Map for the Missing