Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
On a recent trip to Cambodia, I noticed that my first non fiction book Beyond the Pancake Trench is still being sold as a bootleg photocopy in Siem Reap bookshops.
I was browsing the shelves of a pirate DVD shop in Phnom Penh a couple days ago, when I found, much to my surprise, that The [...]
I just reviewed Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice for the The Devil’s Road, a blog on all things Noir and Hardboiled.
Read the full review of this tale of an American journalist on Japan’s crime beat.
2011 proved to be a mad, mad year for me and I’d like to thank all the people who supported me over the past twelve months. Living it all was almost too much. Here’s to the great times this year.
The publication of Sacred Skin, the first book on Thailand’s sacred tattoos, was a major milestone [...]
Finally, the DVD for The Most Secret Place on Earth is out, about a year after the film surfaced on YouTube! There are some great extra, never before seen interviews with the film’s main characters but unfortunately the footage is all in German, as are the subtitles. Given that the film has garnered so much [...]
There’s new additional footage for Marc Eberle’ s The Most Secret Place on Earth, co-written by Tom Vater.
Watch never before seen interview with James Lilley, Deputy CIA station chief in Laos, on the ghosts of the past and the high life in a war zone.
This interview was filmed in August 2006. Note how Lilley [...]
There’s new additional footage for Marc Eberle’ s The Most Secret Place on Earth, co-written by Tom Vater.
Watch never before seen interviews about Tony Poe, one of the CIA’s most effective, ruthless and just plain crazy agents!
About the film:
For a factual telling of the CIA´secret history in Laos, check out The Most Secret Place [...]
Who Killed Chae Vichea is now available as a DVD in The US.
This gripping 55 minute feature is a roller-coaster investigative journey into a tragic political killing and by extension, a story about a country ruled by impunity. And just to prove that a film maker’s work can still have an [...]
Joel Brinkley’s book Cambodia’s Curse – The Modern History of a Troubled Land is the first book to examine the venality of Cambodia’s current government. Ever since Vietnamese withdrawal (Vietnam liberated the country from the genocidal yoke of the Khmer Rouge in 1979) in 1989, Prime Minister Hun Sen and an assortment of allied and [...]
The Most Secret Place on Earth - The CIA’s Covert War in Laos, directed by Marc Eberle and written by Marc Eberle and Tom Vater has just been broadcast on the History Channel.
The film traces the origin and development of the largest clandestine CIA operation to date (at least as far as the agency actually [...]