For Hemingway’s Birthday:
The Hong Kong
Candidate
“Blair, on his first trip to China in five years, expressed his belief that the strengthened relationship between Britain and China would, beyond any doubt, continue to develop…”
— People’s Daily, Beijing, July 21, 2003
“Now he’s poppin’ the piano just to raise the price of a ticket to the land of the free….”
— “Hong Kong Blues,” sung by Hoagy Carmichael in “To Have and Have Not,” a film based on a Hemingway novel.
“The U.S. government repatriated on Monday 15 migrants from a Cuban government vessel that was taken illegally from Cuba…. The island’s communist government said the ship was hijacked and demanded the return of the occupants and the boat.”
— Reuters, Miami, July 21, 2003, 1:08 PM ET
As a review at Amazon.com notes,
“The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work.”