Emma-Lee Moss

Hong Kongers will find themselves ambushed by the specificity of it: the way Moss names the feeling of loving something that the world around you doesn't get. She gives you the nostalgia without saccharine sentimentality, and the rare gift of seeing your own city clearly through someone else's eyes

Fascinating... a beautiful memoir that celebrates the hidden forces that make our lives into something special

An original exploration of identity and politics, as well as a fascinating analysis of modern Hong Kong

Captures that era of Hong Kong music with such warmth and clarity. It’s a scene that shaped generations, and here it feels vivid, alive, and essential... Transcendent and transportive, with prose that kept me hooked to the very last line

Tracing her own life and career alongside the Hong Kong music scene, Moss emerges here as an author of exceptional vision... This is a book not simply for those who love Moss’s music, but for anyone seeking to understand how complicated, tender histories unfurl in our present—and how art emerges to help us through

A captivating memoir-meets-cultural history that blends a modern history of Cantopop with Emma’s own personal journey to reconcile with her identity and Chinese heritage... I was captivated from start to finish and left feeling both moved and more knowledgeable.

Catherine Anne Davies (a.k.a The Anchoress)

Prepare to meet your new favourite playlist

My Cantopop Nights is a wondrous thing: fresh, evocative, self-aware, fantastically light of touch, and wholly original... I read it in one headlong, heartsore sweep

One of my favourite musicians on some of her favourite musicians. A beautiful meditation on how belonging is something we create day by day, year by year.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher

My Cantopop Nights brilliantly captures the sweet sorrow of lost places and lost time. It's a chance to time-travel in vivid sound and colour through Emma-Lee Moss's memories to '80s Hong Kong and back. I loved it.

Becky Barnicoat, author of Cry When the Baby Cries

Emma-Lee Moss brings her lyrical brilliance as a songwriter to this dreamy memoir that interweaves personal history with iconic Hong Kong songs. A must-read for anyone who has ever loved music.

Doretta Lau, author of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?

An incredibly honest and personal memoir that talks about something universal - finding friendship, understanding family, creating an identity in a world that's messy, layered, and complex

Her writing unspools beautifully, connecting childhood, womanhood and motherhood and piecing together the complex parts of an identity that exists between continents. The lens of Hong Kong’s musical heritage is fascinating: I loved reading about the queens of Cantopop and how rebellious singers like Faye Wong and Anita Mui defied convention

A Memoir in Songs

'Captures that era of Hong Kong music with such warmth and clarity... Transcendent and transportive' Angela Hui 
 
‘A wondrous thing: fresh, evocative, self-aware, fantastically light of touch and wholly original’ Sarah Howe 
 
A story of music, fandom and identity, from the acclaimed singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss (a.k.a. Emmy the Great) 
 
For 11-year-old Emma-Lee, the sound of Hong Kong in the summer of 1995 is Cantopop. The Cantopop stars she idolises are everywhere - their images are on every billboard and their music spills from shop speakers onto the streets. When she and her family move to England later that year, Emma-Lee’s love of Cantopop will be pushed underground – the sound and symbol of her secret childhood identity. 
 
My Cantopop Nights is the story of how Emma-Lee found herself in a Hong Kong bar twenty years later, listening to a Cantopop song and realising that this music was her inheritance. It’s about suffering an identity crisis just as the city’s post-colonial tensions erupt into protests. It’s a story of uncanny coincidences, magical thinking and a quest to reconcile the different sides of her heritage: Hong Konger and British, Cantopop and indie. 
 
It’s a story of falling in love with a city, its people and its music, while trying to find your own place to belong. 
 
‘An author of exceptional vision... for anyone seeking to understand how complicated, tender histories unfurl in our present – and how art emerges to help us through’ Jessica J. Lee 
 
'Prepare to meet your new favourite playlist' Dan Schreiber

Emma-Lee Moss

Praise for My Cantopop Nights

Hong Kongers will find themselves ambushed by the specificity of it: the way Moss names the feeling of loving something that the world around you doesn't get. She gives you the nostalgia without saccharine sentim ...

Fascinating... a beautiful memoir that celebrates the hidden forces that make our lives into something special

An original exploration of identity and politics, as well as a fascinating analysis of modern Hong Kong

Hong Kongers will find themselves ambushed by the specificity of it: the way Moss names the feeling of loving something that the world around you doesn't get. She gives you the nostalgia without saccharine sentim ...

Fascinating... a beautiful memoir that celebrates the hidden forces that make our lives into something special

An original exploration of identity and politics, as well as a fascinating analysis of modern Hong Kong

Hong Kongers will find themselves ambushed by the specificity of it: the way Moss names the feeling of loving something that the world around you doesn't get. She gives you the nostalgia without saccharine sentim ...

Fascinating... a beautiful memoir that celebrates the hidden forces that make our lives into something special

An original exploration of identity and politics, as well as a fascinating analysis of modern Hong Kong

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter