The Empress and I

Last week I stumbled across the Hong Kong International Literary Festival when an acquaintance mentioned in passing that she had seen Markus Zusak at the Fringe Club. How on earth did you know it was him? I asked, before waking up to the dull thud of my own stupidity.

By the next day I had tickets to see Margaret Atwood in conversation at the Canadian International School on the topic of 'Devastated Environment: Not Just Science Fiction'.

She was introduced by fellow Canadian and novelist Charlie Foran as being the embodiment of Canadian literature. What he actually said was that when asked to name a Canadian author, rather worryingly only 24% of Canadians could. Of those who could, 75% named Margaret Atwood.

The diminutive Ms Atwood reminded me, with her high cheek bones, long nose and tight little smile, of a Tudor portrait. The conversation felt distinctly stage managed and yet she was interesting and witty and despite her huge status on the stage of world literature even managed to be a little self-deprecating. After about an hour she had clearly had enough of CNIS students and their questions and the rest of us who'd paid to see her but weren’t invited to pose one. (Had I been, I might have wondered how, with all her cabin-dwelling greenness, she expects China to turn back the tide of development just as its population is sniffing the possibilities of urban capitalist wealth and live her rural idyll. Ha, Ms Atwood, get out of that one!) Instead I was reminded of a phrase quoted by the inimitable Jaywalker, “The Empress is tired. You must leave her now.”

I left in a hurry but not before trying to buy her new book. It was sold out and there I stood cursing my bad luck just as the Empress sat down at a table right beside me in readiness for a long line of book signing. She looked up and said, very slowly, as if talking to a delinquent child, Well, it’s available in the city. We stared crossly at each other and then I heard myself say in a cringe-worthy sycophantic Blackadder type way that I had enjoyed her talk and had heard her read from her newly published Cat’s Eye at Blackwells in Oxford 20 years ago since which time I had been an ardent fan. She didn’t look even slightly impressed. I might have added that on that occasion the booksellers had been a darn sight more organised and had made sure there were plenty of copies of her new book available for signing. “The Empress is tired. You must leave her now.” I left.

A couple of days later I was at the Fringe Club for 'Making a Splash’ with debut authors Janice Lee, The Piano Teacher and Rana Dasgupta, Tokyo Cancelled. They were far sparkier than the Empress and by this time I had begun to enjoy the intimate and accessible nature of the Literary Festival so much that I was back again the next night for a discussion on 'Bloggers: Should they be taken seriously?' This time it was Jeffrey Wasserstrom, an academic and founder of the China Beat blog in conversation with former CNN Beijing correspondent and scholar of the Chinese internet Rebecca MacKinnon. I think they were trying to tell us that good blogging does not all have to be about what I ate for breakfast confessional nonsense but on that I beg to differ! And I beg to inform Ms Atwood that her book is NOT available in the city. It is between editions. But perhaps her publishers were too scared to break the news to the Empress.