This tri-lingual book (English, Portuguese, Chinese) includes a series of poetic texts by Brian Castro and artworks by John Young, which both engage their shared histories of Macau. It also offers an introductory letter by Edward Colless and a response from Paul Carter. Castro's text, titled Macau Days: Or Six Characters in Search of a Dish, is structured like a meal and traditional Macanese recipes accompany his texts. Young's artworks - paintings, chalk drawings and montages as well as stunning photographs of the Macanese dishes - are dispersed throughout the texts. Macau, as a place, has gone through fundamental metamorphosis over the course of half a millennium. Beginning as a merchant port of refuge and fisherman's haven, to a gateway for the Jesuit missionaries, and as the nineteenth an twentieth century Modernism of a Portuguese province; where poets and artists from the west and China traversed, and transformed their own orientation in becoming transcultural individuals. Now Macau is defined as a phantasmagoric site for gambling, housing more than 38 casinos, rivalling Las Vegas. These changes have been brought metaphorically into the conditions of the cultural world today. Castro's text, titled Macau Days: Or Six Characters in Search of a Dish, is structured like a meal and traditional Macanese recipes accompany his texts . Young's artworks - paintings, chalk drawings and montages as well as stunning photographs of the Macanese dishes - are dispersed throughout the texts. This book promises to be an exciting, unique and significant cultural object. colour and b/w images
