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Dung Kai-cheung. Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City. Dung Kaicheung, Anders Hansson, and Bonnie S. McDougall, trans. Fiction. Weatherhead Books on Asia series. New York City. Columbia University Press. 2012. 192 pages. $27.00 USD. ISBN 9780231161008
Atlas is a quasi-fictional book written by Dung Kai-cheung from the perspective of a cartographer from the future who is reading maps of Hong Kong and creatively recreating the city of Victoria through theory, analyses, and local histories. The book consists of fifty-one chapters divided into four sections, "Theory," "The City," "Streets," and "Signs." It is written like a series of research topics organized into sections by subject. Each chapter is selfcontained. That is to say, a person can open the book to any chapter and read it independently.
The book was originally written in the late '90s when Hong Kong was returned to China from Britain. At that time, Dung composed Atlas as a creative approach to how Hong Kong could be seen in the future. For the reader without any knowledge of the area, the book reads like a cartographer's study of a specific city, Victoria, the capital of Hong Kong under British rule. However, the book introduction and preface give a look into the author's process and purpose. A combination of real and created research, it is unclear...