When protests erupted in Hong Kong in 2019 and were met with escalating suppression from Beijing, Louisa Lim – raised in Hong Kong as a half-Chinese, half-English child, and now a reporter who had covered the region for more than a decade – realised that she was uniquely positioned to unearth the city’s untold stories.

Lim’s deeply researched and personal account is startling, casting new light on key moments: the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose.