The Flagman

Hong Kong, 1997. The clock is counting down to the handover, and Guy Acheson — freshly divorced, quietly wrecked — has washed up on Cheung Chau Island with no plan beyond staying afloat.

Then Jane arrives, sharp-eyed and impeccably timed, and Guy finds his niche: flags. Not any flags, but the old colours of a city about to say goodbye to them for good.

Around him orbits a cast of rogues — a French chandelier salesman who deals exclusively in aphorisms, a Finn with an evolving relationship to clothing, a rat of improbable size and apparent cunning — all of them circling Morocco’s bar and the ceremony that will make Guy’s flags briefly famous the world over.

Beneath the comedy, something quieter is happening: the portrait of a man discovering, through small acts and unlikely friendships, that damage is not destiny, and that some lives matter not because they are remembered but because they change something before they vanish.

The first of The Sundowners.