Lit Mags
Protected: Quarantining in Her Late Husband’s Apartment Is Making Her Horny
“Before” from HORIZON HONG KONG by Xu Xi, recommended by Sybil Baker
Introduction by Sybil Baker
For more than four decades, Xu Xi’s work has provocatively explored boundaries in genre and geography with an acute perspective on the tensions between East and West. As an American who lived in Asia, I have long appreciated how she uses inventiveness and play to ask what it means to be human during political and personal upheaval in a world with shifting agendas and allegiances. “Before,” from her most recent collection Horizon Hong Kong, is a delightful addition to her expansive oeuvre of 16 books (and counting).
The story begins in the early days of COVID, when the unnamed protagonist, who is in her 60s, is confined to her small apartment in New York City, unable to return to Hong Kong, where she lives. The opening sentence sets up the central tension: “Things were still fine, despite the dreams, until she forgot her grandson’s name.” During her forced isolation and solitude, the protagonist must deal with the geographic and emotional disconnection from her friends and family. The story unfolds associatively, with our protagonist’s dreams, ghost lover, and memories accruing during her endless days alone, forcing her to re-examine the consequences of her decades-old decision to return to Hong Kong with her young son while her husband remained in New York.
Horizon Hong Kong’s 22 stories cover the 1960s to the present day, ranging from the realist to the speculative. In these stories, characters navigate changes—in time, relationships, politics, and identities—under the evolving and intertwined histories of Hong Kong and the wider world. Xu Xi’s work speaks to timeless questions of what it means to live with grace in what often seems to be an indifferent or even cruel universe. With its compassionate reckoning of an imperfect life examined in the forced pause between the past and the unknown future, “Before” is an appropriate introduction to Xu Xi’s work for new readers, and a welcome addition for long-time fans like me.
– Sybil Baker
Author of Apparitions
