Urban Fictional History: Postmodern Space-Time Experimentation in The Atlas by Kai-cheung Dung

Abstract

The critical examination of Hong Kong’s identity and the spatial turn in narrative forms were two prominent characteristics of Hong Kong literature in the late 20th century. Kai-cheung Dung’s novel The Atlas: Archaeology of an Imaginary City, published in 1997, the year of Hong Kong’s handover, addresses this issue, embodying the pursuit and deconstruction of Hong Kong’s local consciousness. This paper focuses on the postmodern features of this work from the dimensions of time and space, including: (1) the dialectical relationship between time and space; (2) the construction of the third space; (3) the latent text of Hong Kong identity. Kai-cheung Dung tries to create an imaginary space that opposes the forgotten and subverted Hong Kong of reality. It is an infinitely expanding literary universe, in which he explores the city's complex nature and pursues a sense of self-orientation born between forgetting and remembering. Through a detailed analysis of The Atlas: Archaeology of an Imaginary City, the opening work of Kai-cheung Dung’s Series of V City, this paper aims to complete the understanding of his continually evolving literary world—revealing a stable internal unity beneath the fragmented and disjointed textual representations.