Excerpt from Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He did not want a girlfriend. He was no longer capable of loving. He did not want to disappoint and be disappointed any longer. He wanted to be alone.

IV

They had met in winter on a cold, rainy Sunday morning on Lamma while he was on his daily walk and she was looking for Sok Kwu Wan village and the ferry back to Hong Kong. It had started raining heavily. He had been taking shelter in a viewing pavilion, looking over the lead-gray sea with its curling crests of white foam. He startled when she spoke from behind him.

"Excuse me."

Like her, he was wearing waterproof hiking shoes and a darkgreen rain hood that hung low over his forehead. His face was wet and a drop of water dangled from the tip of his nose; a couple of gray strands of hair were pasted to his brow.

The rain pattered on their backs, and she took a step closer to this strange man, who insisted on standing right in the middle of the shelter on the only totally dry spot, and was staring at her with such surprise that it seemed he thought he was alone in the world. "Excuse me," she repeated. "I didn't mean to startle you."

He still said nothing. She had the feeling that he might shatter any moment, like a car windshield cracking into thousands of little pieces. She had never seen such a vulnerable expression on anyone's face before. She would have liked to take him by the hand, lead him to a bench, sit down next to him, and look out at the sea until he was able to speak again. But there was no bench, it was cold, and the ferry was leaving in forty minutes.

"Could you tell me how to get to Sok Kwu Wan, perhaps?"

He said nothing but looked at her and, finally, nodded, as if he had thought something over long and hard.

She tried again. "I'm looking for Sok Kwu Wan. Am I going the right way?"

"Why are you going there?"

Did he not understand her English or was he just not listening properly? Why was this man not able to give a simple answer to a simple question?

"To take the ferry to Hong Kong," she replied.

He nodded again. "Continue along this path. You'll see it behind the second hilltop you pass."

"How long will it take to get there?"

He looked out into the rain, which was drumming down onto the roof more and more heavily, and wrinkled his brow. "In this weather? A long time, I'm afraid," he suddenly said in Cantonese.

She smiled briefly, without knowing exactly why. Was it his soft, quiet voice with its strange singsong manner, which was completely unsuited to the harsh, brusque sound of her language, or the roundabout way in which they were conversing?

They waited until the rain let up. He wanted to know why she had come to Lamma in such dreadful weather, and she had replied that she was asking herself exactly the same thing. A friend had recommended a walk on this island, but she must have come in the fall. She talked about her Sunday walks on Lantau and in the New Territories and how beautiful the Sai Kung Peninsula and the beaches on it were, and how hardly anyone knew how much green space Hong Kong had, really, or how many nature reserves there were. He listened to her so attentively and patiently, which no one had done for a long time, and gazed at her so earnestly with his deep-blue eyes, as if she really had something important to say, that she just kept on talking and talking. She talked about how much these outings meant to her, how she sat for six days a week from 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM in an open-plan office with two employees and one intern. She told him about her twelve-year-old son, Josh, who had absolutely refused to continue coming on these walks with her a year ago and spent the time with friends instead, wasting his time on Game Boys and video games. She had given up trying to persuade him to come with her or to change his mind with treats or threats. As a single mother she had to choose her battles. She talked so much that she only realized too late how cold she was and how the ever-growing wind had blown the rain under her jacket and through her pants. She shivered. He invited her to warm herself up at his house.

Excerpted from Whispering Shadows by Jan-Philipp Sendker. Copyright © 2015 by Jan-Philipp Sendker. Excerpted by permission of 37 Ink/Atria Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.