Books from Macau

City of Broken Promises is a historical novel by Austin Coates set in Macao during the final decades of the eighteenth century. It follows the life of Martha Merop, a Chinese orphan who endures severe hardship before gradually becoming one of the most powerful traders on the China Coast. The story covers the period from 1780 to 1795, a time when Macao served as the main gateway for European commerce with China. Coates constructed the narrative using oral traditions and archival records, grounding the fiction in documented events and real figures.

Central to the plot is Martha's connection with a British merchant linked to the founding of Lloyd's. Their relationship carries promises that shape the direction of both their lives, set against a colonial port city where European and Chinese interests meet, overlap, and frequently collide. The novel pays close attention to the power imbalances of gender and colonial authority that defined daily life in Macao during this era.

Coates spent years living in Hong Kong and Macao, and his familiarity with the region is visible in the period detail he brings to the setting. The book draws its strength from specifics: trade routes, local customs, and the social architecture of a small but strategically important port.

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Joan and Emma Lew are the daughters of a Hong Kong businessman whose family life is disrupted by the Second World War. In the early 1940s the family leaves for Macao and waits out the war years there. When they return, the sisters begin to grow apart. Joan, the elder, is drawn to films and romantic ideals. Emma, encouraged by an independent-minded aunt, looks toward college in San Francisco.

Gail Tsukiyama follows the two women across decades as each moves away from what her family expects. Joan leans toward tradition and thoughts of marriage, yet her interest in cinema opens a different possibility. Emma pursues an artistic and independent life abroad, though distance from Hong Kong carries its own cost. Their bond is tested by separation and by the very different choices each makes.

Around the sisters stands a close family: parents, relatives, and the aunt whose independence shapes Emma's thinking. The novel weaves periods of happiness and loss into that network, and much of its attention falls on how obligations to family sit beside private ambition. Hong Kong and Macao remain reference points as the story moves outward.

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Macau became the first European colony in Asia when the Portuguese settled there over 450 years ago. The long coexistence of Portuguese and Chinese communities produced a distinct local cuisine, one of the earliest examples of what is now called fusion cooking in Asia. Annabel Jackson's Taste of Macau collects 62 recipes drawn from old family collections and from the files of established Macanese chefs, presenting them to an English-speaking audience for the first time.

The book was compiled shortly after the 1999 handover of Macau from Portuguese to Chinese sovereignty, a period when much of the Portuguese-speaking community was leaving the territory. Jackson spent close to ten years gathering and testing recipes, contacting members of the Macanese diaspora and asking them to write about food and its place in their lives. The result functions both as a practical cookbook, with illustrated step-by-step guidance, and as a record of domestic cooking traditions that were at risk of being lost as families dispersed.

Dishes in the collection reflect the layered history of a port city shaped by trade routes linking Lisbon, Goa, Malacca, and the South China coast. Ingredients and techniques from each of these regions appear side by side in recipes passed through generations of Macanese households.

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Ava Lee is a forensic accountant, a specialist trained to trace hidden money through tangled records. In The Red Pole of Macau, her professional skills are pulled into a personal crisis when her half brother Michael and his business partner Simon become trapped in a failed real-estate venture in Macau. The developers behind the deal have connections to organized crime, and what begins as a financial dispute quickly becomes something far more dangerous. Simon is kidnapped, and the stakes shift from lost money to physical survival.

Ava is determined to handle the situation without involving her mentor, Uncle, a figure with his own ties to triad society. Instead she turns to May Ling Wong, a former client with resources and sharp instincts of her own. The alliance between the two women becomes a central thread of the story as they work against armed opponents and a shrinking timeline.

Ian Hamilton sets the novel in Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the Pearl River Delta that became a Special Administrative Region of China in 1999. The city's massive casino and property development industry provides a concrete backdrop for the collision between family loyalty and criminal enterprise that drives the plot.

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