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An exceptionally well-reviewed novel about a young man's obsession with the suicide of a young woman incarcerated in a Thai prison for murder. 'Such an addictive page-turner that I almost missed my stop on the bus' "The Times"
Synopsis
When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa goes along for the ride, planning only to enjoy himself as much as possible. But when he hears about the suicide of a young woman, Martiya van der Leun, in the Thai prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder, what begins as mild curiosity becomes an obsession.
Book Details
Publisher:
Atlantic Books
Publication Date:
01-Jun-2009
ISBN:
9781843547655
Observer review
Missionaries, murder, and the postmodern
Robert Collins the observer Sat 06 June 2009
American anthropologist Martiya van der Leun had lived for years among a tribe in Thailand, where she encountered the Walkers, a family of missionaries intent on converting the locals. On being found guilty of murdering one of them, she commits suicide in prison, giving rise to an ethnographic murder mystery narrated in postmodern fashion by someone called "Mischa Berlinski", a journalist who is only in Thailand because he's followed his girlfriend to the country. The real Berlinski had intended to produce a history of the Lisu people of northern Thailand before writing this novel, and his first foray into fiction sparkles with original, eyewitness observations of remote tribes and western missionaries alike.
