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The World of Suzie Wong is a 1957 novel written by Richard Mason, which has since been adapted into both a play and a film.
The book is about an English artist, Robert Lomax, who visits Hong Kong and falls in love with the mysterious prostitute Suzie Wong. Two worlds collide in this classic tale of romance about the strength of true love.
The novel was first adapted into a stage production and was first produced in 1958 by David Merrick and starred William Shatner and France Nuyen.
The book was later adapted into a film in 1960, directed by Richard Quine and starring William Holden, Nancy Kwan, Sylvia Syms, and Michael Wilding. It featured the English actor Lionel Blair who played a small bit part as a dancing sailor.
Holden played Robert Lomax as a struggling American artist who is down on his luck when he meets the beautiful Chinese prostitute Suzie Wong (Kwan). As she is mysterious he decides to follow her and finds she has a child, but the child is killed in an accident. Despite all this Lomax manages to fall in love with her.
Filmed on location in the streets of Hong Kong, this was Nancy Kwan's first film.
Like many films based on books, however, many believe that the book is better than the film, being a much deeper story and better encapsulating of the Hong Kong of that era.
The Luk Kwok Hotel featured in the story still exists on Harcourt Road in Wanchai, although the building is now more modern, the site having been redeveloped in the 1980s. Also, unlike the hotel in the book, the modern hotel is not a pseudo-brothel and is one of many smaller smart hotels on Hong Kong island. Visitors today should travel a few streets further south to Lockhart Road and Jaffe Road for today's versions of similar establishments as the Luk Kwok in the story.
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