Nury Vittachi is one of Hong Kong's most popular contemporary writers in English and has been hailed by CNN as 'the beat reporter of the offbeat'. Vittachi and his parents fled the war in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Britain. He began his career with the South China Morning Post in the late 1980s and is well known for not pulling his punches in his journalistic writing - his gossip column was deemed too dangerous to publish after Hong Kong was handed over to China. The founder of the Hong Kong Literary Festival, he also helped in the set-up of the Man Asia Literary Prize. He now lives with his English wife and three adopted Chinese children in Hong Kong.