Romancing the East
A Literary Odyssey from the Heart of Darkness to the River Kwai
Published on 26. March 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-0-8048-4320-1 (ISBN)
Description
Profiling individual, legendary authors, best-selling author Jerry Hopkins combines his research and his own experiences as a longtime expatriate with an intimate knowledge of Asia and offers us a unique perspective on the impact of Eastern culture in Western literature.
From the time of Marco Polo's trek across the Central Asian desert to the empire of the mighty Mongol Khan, no other place on earth, not the languid South Pacific or even deepest, darkest Africa has so challenged and enchanted the Western imagination as have the fabled lands of the East!
However soaked in blood its history and no matter how unsettling its social conditions and poverty, Asia has never lost its irresistible attraction or mysticism. It has long been an inspiration for Western novelists, so much so that more than 5000 novels have been set in Asia in the English language alone. Storied names like Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Pearl S. Buck, George Orwell, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster and many more have used their experiences in Asia as a vibrant backdrop for some of the world's most famous works of literature.
From the time of Marco Polo's trek across the Central Asian desert to the empire of the mighty Mongol Khan, no other place on earth, not the languid South Pacific or even deepest, darkest Africa has so challenged and enchanted the Western imagination as have the fabled lands of the East!
However soaked in blood its history and no matter how unsettling its social conditions and poverty, Asia has never lost its irresistible attraction or mysticism. It has long been an inspiration for Western novelists, so much so that more than 5000 novels have been set in Asia in the English language alone. Storied names like Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, Pearl S. Buck, George Orwell, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster and many more have used their experiences in Asia as a vibrant backdrop for some of the world's most famous works of literature.
Reviews / Votes
"Hopkins, the author of famous rocks bios on Jim Morrison and Elvis, as well as a chronicler of Asia in non-fiction titles such as Thailand Confidential and Asian Aphrodisiacs, has a highly effective bullshit detector. He knows how to disentangle the facts from the fictions....Thanks to the author's conversational writing style and talent for uncovering the telling anecdote, the book never gets bogged down in cumbersome lit crit. TripAdvisor will help you find restaurants and lodgings, but Romancing the East by Jerry Hopkins serves up the artistic spices and brain food that will nourish and embellish any of your wanderings in Asia and India. " --PATA Compass "Jerry Hopkins was present at the creation of Rolling Stone magazine and the early hippie days of West Coast rock. After penning the definitive biography of Jim Morrison--No One Here Gets Out Alive--he took off for a long sojourn in Hawaii. He's been in Thailand now for 20 years, still writing books, three dozen of them so far. My favorite is Bangkok Babylon--profiles of 26 well-known expatriates in Thailand. He's done the same now with 32 Western writers in Romancing the East. His portraits range from Conrad and Kipling to Greene and Burgess to Theroux and Naipaul...I would have preferred that weak chapters on Richard Conlon and Ian Fleming be replaced by more serious observers of Asia...but this is to criticize Jerry Hopkins for the book he did not write. The one he did is shrewd, fascinating, trenchant, an education and a joy to read." --Phuket Gazette "Sometimes it's hard to see the trees when the forest is so big. But, collectively, Hopkins' chapters paint an absorbing mural of displaced foreigners struggling to understand and explain "the exotic East" in the context of their own damaged lives and forsaken homelands." --The NationMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Boston
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
272 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8048-4320-1 (9780804843201)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Book
06/2017
Tuttle Publishing
€29.91
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Additional editions
E-Book
03/2013
Tuttle Publishing
€4.49
Available for download
Person
Jerry Hopkins has published more than 1,000 magazine articles and 36 books, including several international bestsellers--the cult classic No One Here Gets Out Alive, among them. This biography of rock singer Jim Morrison was a No. 1 bestseller in the New York Times in 1980 (remaining on that list for nine months) and went back to No. 2 in 1991 when it was a primary source for Oliver Stone's film The Doors. There are more than four million copies in print. He moved to Thailand in 1993 and developed a strong reputation writing about food, travel, and various aspects of Asian life and culture. Since moving he has written Thailand Confidential, a collection of essays about life in that country; Bangkok Babylon, twenty-five profiles of some of the most interesting expatriates he met during his first ten years in Southeast Asia; and Asian Aphrodisiacs, the first definitive (and often humorous) survey of the region's best and worst "turn-ons," the first two published in 2005, the last in 2006. He and his Thai-Khmer wife divide their time between a flat in Bangkok and a house on a working farm an eight-hour train ride away near the Cambodian border.