The Opium of the East. In the Footsteps of Orwell, Conrad, Kipling and Other Great Writers Enchanted by Asia

The author, who has lived for more than two decades in Southeast Asia, follows in the footsteps of great writers — Rudyard Kipling, W. Somerset Maugham, George Orwell, Joseph Conrad and others — and visits the settings of their books to understand what attracted these celebrities to these lands and what remains of the East that inspired literary figures, and what has been irretrievably lost. An engaging narrative that combines biography, literary analysis, reportage, historical chronicle, and travel essay.