Description

‘Tongueless is a slow-burn social horror that deftly captures the way human cruelty always returns to destroy its originator.’ Molly McGhee, author of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

Wai and Ling are secondary school Chinese language teachers in Hong Kong, both crumbling under the pressure of a forced transition from using Cantonese to Mandarin as a medium of Chinese-language instruction. Apolitical and focused only on surviving their professional environment, Wai and Ling approach the challenge differently: Wai, awkward and unpopular, becomes obsessed with Mandarin learning, only to fail the qualification exam, lose her job, become mentally ill, and kill herself by inserting a drill into her head.

Ling is polished and cunning, she knows how to please her superiors and believes she can tactfully dodge the Mandarin challenge through her social savviness. Ling sees herself haunted and mirrored by Wai’s tragedy: things around her slowly spiral out of control and her colleagues begin to shun her too. What will she do to survive in a ruthless environment where the rules of survival are constantly being re-written?

Tongueless is a taut, compelling novel of betrayal, power imbalance and rapid social change.

Publisher Review

Insightful and investigative, Lau Yee-Wa explores the searing politics of a threatened tongue in Hong Kong with tact, terror and empathy. She evokes a dangerously competitive world fuelled by success, shopping, inflation of house prices, educational hierarchy and social status. It’s a timely portrayal of a city that has experienced a seismic shock and is grappling with the consequences of irreversible change. — Kit Fan, author of Diamond Hill Darkly gleaming with claustrophobic terror and pitch-black humour, Tongueless picks away at the surface of Hong Kong to reveal the festering tensions that lie beneath … skillfully depicts the relentless pressures that ordinary Hongkongers come under — Jeremy Tiang, author of State of Emergency Tongueless shocked me as much as any masterpiece I have ever read — Chan Ho-Kei, author of The Borrowed