The Emperor's Old Clothes

by Jake van der Kamp

Throughout his reign the Emperor had matched his clothes to his big initiatives – military uniform for an armed conflict, track suit for the athletic push, overalls for his agricultural projects and business suit for his drive to make the kingdom a financial centre. One by one his efforts failed and in the end he decided that he had nothing left to show them. It meant one last change of clothes. Jake van der Kamp is a Hong Kong-based financial journalist and novelist whose fiction on the theme of ‘old stories told anew’ explores organised religion, social dilemmas stemming from the rapid pace of technological change and the likely ordering of society in the Space Age of the future.

228 pages, Paperback

First published June 24, 2005

About the author

I am an expatriate and have been one almost my entire life. My family emigrated to Vancouver from my birthplace in the Netherlands when I was only three years old. I then headed further west as a young man and, with only the shirt on my back and a few changes of clothes in a gym bag, I fetched up in one of the world’s great magical cities, Hong Kong. My university student newspaper, The Ubyssey, had awarded me a “Masher of Journalism” degree and it was enough to be taken on as a business reporter by the English language South China Morning Post.

Almost fifty years later Hong Kong is still my home. In the interval I have worked as a securities analyst in one of the world’s greatest ever bull markets and then returned to the South China Morning Post as a daily financial columnist for almost twenty years. I also found my wife Veronica and she found us the seaside home where our three children grew up.

In retirement I have indulged a long held dream of retelling old fairy tales in different contexts as social commentary. These are the books I introduce here. They run on the theme that we are at the cusp of the Space Age and must abandon the formal religious notions of our past. Our future lies not in the cradle of planet Earth but out through the wider galaxy in Space colonies that we who choose to go must ourselves build. I am an expatriate and I dream of taking that step into the expatriate unknown.

Reviews

[Axel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The old fairly tale told from the perspective of one of Hong Kong's most well-known economists/journalists. If reading about the dangers of big government and how good intentions in politics can lead to disastrous consequences, this book is for you. However, it can be a bit dry at times and prone to repetition, just like the real world.