Monsters within Hong Kong’s “cesspool of iniquity”: Kowloon Walled City and Temutma (1998)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, there has been increased critical interest in postcolonial Gothic literature, as well as in political tensions in Hong Kong. This article investigates Hong Kong as a Gothic locale, and how the anxieties surrounding Hong Kong’s 1997 turnover of sovereignty can be studied through literary-critical investigation of the Gothic genre. It argues that there is an inherent Gothicity to the now demolished Kowloon Walled City because of its situation at the interface of Sino-British relations. The article takes as its case study Rebecca Bradley and Stewart Sloan’s Temutma (1998), a Gothic novel whose representation of Kowloon Walled City explores concerns about Hong Kong’s uncertain future in the lead-up to the 1997 turnover. The eponymous monster antagonist of the novel is read as a culturally ambiguous manifestation and personification of the fears of social upheaval leading up to the turnover and Hong Kong’s contractual reunification with China.