Cover image of "On Java Road," a novel about the Hong Kong democracy movement

Adrian Gyle has been working with little distinction or reward as a reporter in Hong Kong for more than twenty years. He had “arrived in Hong Kong just after the Handover, knowing nobody except my old university friend Jimmy Tang.” He and Jimmy, a notorious womanizer, had been odd-couple friends at Cambridge lo those many years ago: Adrian, “a scholarship boy from a small town no one has ever heard of;” Jimmy, the scion of a billionaire family. Yet even now they still sometimes chummed about with Jimmy and his wife, Melissa—or, more often, in a different threesome with Jimmy’s twenty-three-year-old girlfriend, Rebecca To. The young woman, a university senior, is actively involved in the Hong Kong democracy movement that is clogging the city’s streets. And Adrian worries about Rebecca, as the authorities’ crackdown on the demonstrations turns increasingly violent—worries until she turns up missing, probably dead at the hands of the police. This is the story novelist Lawrence Osborne tells at a maddeningly slow pace in On Java Road.

When dissenters crowded Hong Kong’s streets

In 1997, the United Kingdom ceded control over its crown colony of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China. The treaty memorializing the Handover provided for “one country, two systems.” Hong Kong would remain democratic and autonomous for fifty years until 2047. But Xi Jinping was unwilling to wait that long. His forces began cracking down on dissent only two years after he became General Secretary of the Chinese Community Party in 2012. And in 2020, his government formally ended the “one country, two systems” arrangement.

But the fiercely independent press and students in Hong Kong’s liberal universities had been demonstrating their unhappiness with Beijing’s changes even before the formal ending of the treaty arrangements. Those demonstrations turned violent in 2014, with the police wielding tear gas and triad gangsters attacking students who were participating in the Umbrella Movement. But the scale of the opposition, and the ferocity of the official response, reached a deadly peak in 2019. That’s the year Rebecca To disappears.

On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne (2022) 257 pages ★★★☆☆

Photo of democracy protest, part of the Hong Kong democracy movement
Hong Kong’s streets filled with democracy protests like this as the action unfolds in On Java Road. Image: SkyNews

Two middle-aged men, oblivious to history

Unfortunately, Osborne relegates these events far into the background of his novel. We’re aware that police are dragging protesters off to jail, and that some are losing their lives. But these events have no visible effect on Adrian or Jimmy’s lives. They simply party on, drawing Rebecca further into their orbit. And Adrian, who narrates this story, incessantly reflects on the mess he’s made of his life and on Jimmy’s unfaithfulness to his wife. None of these are happy people. And I wasn’t either, as I read this lame story.

About the author

Photo of Lawrence Osborne, author of this novel about the Hong Kong democracy movement
Lawrence Osborne. Image: Xiaomei Chen – South China Morning Post

Lawrence Osborne is the author of thirteen novels and a collection of short stories. His long-form journalism has also appeared in leading publications in the United States. Osborne was born in London, England, in 1958 and educated at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He has lived all over the world and now resides in Bangkok.

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