Hui Gui, "returning home" in Chinese, has come to designate the British handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, the pivotal event that launches this moving and poignant epic novel of twentieth century China and Hong Kong. The novel transports the reader through time and place with the memorable story of Tak Sing growing up in war-torn China of the thirties and forties and leaving the mainland for Hong Kong as a refugee following the Communist victory in 1949. Years later, as the clock ticks towards the handover, Tak Sing's daughter Serena recalls her family's stories of love and loss, courage and survival. In simple, poetic prose, Elsie Sze spins a mesmerizing tale of a homecoming and extols the triumph of the spirit over the inevitabilities of the human predicament.