Pulitzer Prize-winner Hernan Diaz on the power of narratives and ‘beautiful’ Hong Kong

“It is not entirely clear who is trespassing on whom.”

Diaz is on a walk with the South China Morning Post ahead of his talks at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, which ran from March 1-8.

This was Diaz’s first visit to the city, and he absorbed the surroundings through the same high-contrast lens he employed in the 416-page Trust – one of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2022, and the winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Set during the boom and bust of 1920s Wall Street, this forensic study of the accumulation of wealth and reputation is presented in four stylistically distinct and incompatible parts. The friction between the grindingly opposing narratives reveals an approximation of the truth.