Sour Sweet

Timothy Mo’s deft portrayal of London’s Chinatown in the 1960s, where a thriving community lives by its own precise and violent rules.

At the centre of 1960s London, the Chinese community flourishes like a spiky, brilliant crystal garden in the murky waters of Soho. Pitched into an alien city, which is neither hostile nor friendly but very strange and very foreign, the Chen family prospers by skilfully, and sometimes incongruously, blending tradition and opportunity. But no private family lives beyond the reach of the largest and most powerful Chinese ‘family’ - the Triad.

"Deft and affectionate, then, when focusing on the family, but less successful in its melodrama and Chinese-gang sociology."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Timothy Peter Mo His works have won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) and three of his novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Mo was also the recipient of the 1992 E. M. Forster Award. Since 1994, when he rejected a £125,000 advance from Random House for his next novel, he has self-published his books under the label Paddleless Press.