Nigel Collett is a former Lieutenant-Colonel in the British army and author of The Butcher of Amritsar. He is a contributor to the Asian Review of Books and is a moderator for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival he was instrumental in promoting the first event which had a focus on gay and lesbian writing in 2008.
While many of Leslie Cheung’s songs, recordings, concerts and films were widely known outside of Southeast Asia during the 1980s and 1990s, the impact of his death by suicide in 2003 on fans in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea probably wasn’t deeply understood by most of the English-speaking world.
Collett’s thoroughly researched Firelight of a Different Colour is both a tribute to Leslie and a likely resource for all future biographies and documentaries about the widely respected actor and highly popular Cantopop star. For many English-speaking readers, the book is a wonderful, in-depth introduction to Leslie, Hong Kong’s entertainment business, and to the difficulties of gay performers within the colony’s compact and often-hostile media environment.
