Jake
van der Kamp
Featured Books
The Twelfth Fairy
The Last Priests
Other Gods
I am an expatriate and have been one almost my entire life. My family emigrated to Canada from my birthplace in the Netherlands when I was only three years old. I then headed further west as a young man with only my passport in hand and a few changes of clothes in a gym bag, fetching up in one of the world’s great magical cities, Hong Kong. My university student newspaper, The Ubyssey, had awarded me a “Masher of Journalism” degree, the Vancouver Sun had given me practical experience, and it was enough for the South China Morning Post to take me on as a business reporter.
Almost fifty years later Hong Kong is still my home. In the interval I worked for many years as an investment securities analyst in one of the world’s greatest ever bull markets and then returned to the Morning Post as a daily financial columnist. Along the way I found my wife Veronica and she found us the seaside home where our three children grew up.
In retirement I have indulged a long held dream of retelling old fairy tales in different contexts as social commentary. These are the books I introduce here. They run on the theme that we are on the cusp of the Space Age and must fully abandon the organised religions and patriotisms of our past. We have outgrown the cradle of planet Earth and must leave it to travel through the wider galaxy in giant colonies that those who choose to go must build in Space. I am an expatriate and I dream of taking that step into the expatriate unknown.
ABOUT ME
TRIBUTE
Over the skyline of the hills to the north lies the densest urban agglomeration on Earth. The sky is aglow there all night as if the sun were about to rise. In the wide valley on this side of the hills, however, only the street lights of a winding two lane road break the darkness of the night. All is green jungle laced by a nineteenth century network of water catchments that funnel the summer rains into reservoirs at the base of the valley. The maintenance paths along these catchments, winding in and out of the hills under the trees, are where I go on afternoon walks.
Here a soft spring wind carrying wild woodland scents blows fresh on my face and arms, rustling the new leaves that have billowed out all round in their thousand hues of tropical green. From down below comes the booming call of the rain bird while the soaring kites overhead cry to each other in their piercing trill. A little up the hill a wild pig snorts on catching my scent. Out there with the wind and the cobras, says a friend. Yes, it is the cobra’s home, too. Here in the wild dreams arise.
