Lawrence Osborne

"After twenty years as a journalist in Hong Kong, ex-pat Englishman Adrian Gyle has very little to show for it. Evenings are whiled away with soup dumplings and tea at Fung Shing, the restaurant downstairs from his home on Java Road, that "most melancholy street in the city, the street where the dead congregated." It is through these jaded eyes that Gyle watches the city around him--once overflowing with wine dinners and private members' clubs--erupt...

As night falls on Macau and the neon signs that line the rain-slick streets come alive, Doyle - "Lord Doyle" to his fellow players - descends into his casino of choice to try his luck at the baccarat tables that are the anchor of his current existence. A corrupt English lawyer who has escaped prosecution by fleeing to the East, Doyle spends his nights drinking and gambling and his days sleeping off his excesses, continually haunted by his past. Taking...

In order to escape his boring English life, Robert, a twenty-eight-year-old teacher, re-imagines himself in Cambodia where he befriends an unstable American, falls in love with a wealthy young woman, and is threatened by the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.

An exploration of "man's love of drink and [a] ... meditation on the meaning of alcohol consumption across cultures worldwide"--Dust jacket flap.