Set in Wuhan Province and British Guiana around 1876, the novel brings together the concurrent settings of the break up of feudal life in Wuhan and post-emancipation British Guiana. It is a novel which explores the complexities of dwelling in servitude in these societies in the last decades of the 19th century. 

The novel is told chiefly through the eyes of a travelling textile merchant, Jia Yun, who leaves Wuhan to join the great exodus of migrants fleeing poverty in China, most of them indentured, to work in the canefields of Demerara. 

Through a series of letters intended for his sweetheart, Li Jie, Jia Yun gives a vivid account of the conditions of life for Indians, Africans and other ethnic groups living under British rule, whilst the sections of the novel set in China capture life in rural Wuhan under a crumbling feudal regime. 

Sweet Li Jie is also a novel which highlights the complex interpersonal relations and intimacies that develop between the novel’s characters – for example, between the landlord, Wang Changling and his servant, Bayou in Wuhan and between Jia Yun and his Afro-Guyanese guide, Harris in Demerara – revealing their struggles for personhood and interdependence in the face of vulnerability and uncertainty.

Sweet Li Jie  is shortlisted for the Caribbean's biggest literary prize. Books by fifteen authors with roots in eight countries have been shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media. Presented annually since 2011, the OCM Bocas Prize is the most coveted award for Caribbean.

The judges praised the novel highly, saying:

Sweet Li Jie by the veteran UK-based Guyanese writer David Dabydeen is a historical novel told through a series of letters written by a late-19th-century Chinese migrant in British Guiana, addressed to his sweetheart in Wuhan Province. “Dabydeen uses the epistolary device to great effect, to allow fascinating angles on how Guiana and its inhabitants might have appeared to a relatively well-off Chinese arrivant, bringing with him a different range of prejudices to the more familiar European ones … The writing is both poised and playful.”