Eclectic crime fiction & informed, irreverent non-fiction from Asia & beyond
I had just reached Don Sak pier, a coastal Thai ferry port for boats to the tourist islands of Koh Samui, Koh Phangan and Koh Tao, when I almost lost my mind. I was at the end of a 10-week, 80-destination travel stint for the British publisher Rough Guides, researching the Thailand chapter for the […]
Continue ReadingI am talking about Kolkata, a city close to my heart, to Talk Travel Asia this week. I was in Kolkata as a participant of the Indo European Artist Residency last year. The Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan invited me to write crime fiction set in the West Bengal capital. The result, a series of novellas […]
Continue ReadingCambodia: Journey through the Land of the Khmer with photos by Kraig Lieb and my text remains a bestseller in Cambodia. The second edition came out late last year. There’s currently a great light display for the book at Phnom Penh airport.
Continue ReadingSpotted a couple of books of mine in a second hand shop in Banglamphu, Bangkok, the other day. My first nonfiction Beyond the Pancake Trench (2004) and my second novel The Cambodian Book of the Dead (2013).
Continue ReadingLaura Snook, Cambodia’s high priestess of punk, ace magazine editor, and a fantastic, sensitive and kind woman and all round Rocknroll lady. What a huge loss. I wrote the following text for her remembrance concert in Phnom Penh in March. Laura, I’d like to quote from a novel by John D MacDonald: I get the […]
Continue ReadingToday’s interview is with a very special friend of the Where Sidewalks End community. It is my honour to introduce to you Mr Tom Vater. Tom is a published author, a long time journalist in the field, co-owner of a publishing house “Crime Wave Press”, and a long time explorer of the world, with a […]
Continue ReadingI’ve been interviewed by Fiona McVie about my life as a writer. And here’s me with my friend and fellow Crime Wave Press owner Hans Kemp. Fiona: What book are you reading now? Just finished The Butterfly by James M Cain, about a man sleeping with his daughter. Not perhaps in the league as his […]
Continue ReadingHere’s my new and very slick professional profile at Clippings.me. Thanks for taking a look. Sure beats LinkedIn.
Continue ReadingAsia, mon amour. Every time I go out in the street in my adopted continent, I see something that, by the central European standards I grew up with, is outrageous, logic defying, irresponsible, shocking or at the very least unusual. Sometimes it is terrible, at other times beautiful. Sometimes it is trivial,sometimes sublime, at other […]
Continue ReadingWhere it all started – standing atop a sand dune in the Draa Valley around Zagora in southern Morrocco in 1992. It looked and was unbearably romantic. I can still smell the sand today. Zagora was to become one of the main locations for the shoot of Paul Bowles‘ incredible novel The Sheltering Sky which […]
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