MO, TIMOTHY

born Dec. 30, 1950, Hong Kong in full Timothy Peter Mo Anglo-Chinese writer whose critically acclaimed novels explore the intersection of English and Cantonese cultures. Born to an English mother and a Chinese father, Mo lived in Hong Kong until age 10, when he moved to Britain. He was educated at the University of Oxford, after which he became a journalist and reviewer for the Times Educational Supplement and the New Statesman, as well as a contributor to London's Boxing News; he himself had been a bantamweight boxer. Mo's first novel, The Monkey King (1978), is set in Hong Kong. Comic and ironic, it tells the story of Wallace Nolasco, a naive young Portuguese-Chinese in Hong Kong, who manages not only to gain control of his father-in-law's business but eventually to head the family. Sour Sweet (1982), which won the Hawthornden Prize in 1982, deals with the immigrant experience in England, specifically with the racism encountered by a Chinese family when they open a restaurant in London. The action of An Insular Possession (1986) occurs during the 19th-century Opium Wars. Another novel, The Redundancy of Courage (1991), is set in a troubled area (recognizable as East Timor) invaded by Indonesian forces and betrayed by Western powers. Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard (1995), a novel set in the Philippines, details the mishaps of a number of delegates at an international ecological conference.