How does one write a preemptive eulogy for their hometown, a transient metropolis arriving at its last stop? Composed over a span of three months, Postscripts from a City Burning reassembles the embers left behind by the 2019 Hong Kong protests (and ultimately failed coup), weaving nostalgia, loss, and possible redemption into a time capsule of diaristic verse, photographs, dramatic monologues, and historical testimony. At once angry, despondent and unflinching, Sam Cheuk's second full-length collection offers up a microcosmic prelude of a city's smouldering ruin, one among many in a world marching to the heartbeat of increasingly authoritarian impulses.
