Borderlines

In 1986 Charles Nicholl went to Thailand, intending to take a 'spiritual rest-cure' in a Buddhist forest temple. But the way there had many surprising side turnings. A chance meeting on the night train north takes him on a circuitous journey in the company of Harry, a French gem-trader with a chequered past, and his mercurial Thai girlfriend, Katai. For the travel writer, he learns, it's not what you go looking for that counts, but what you find. They drift along the banks of the Mekong, up into the Golden Triangle and into the rebel strongholds of northern Burma. Opium dreams and jade windows, spirit-callers and moon-hares: Nicholl's crisp, vivid prose captures every detail of this elusive adventure, as we travel with him across borderlines both real and imaginary.

Auteur

Charles Nicholl has written twelve books of history, biography and travel. His account of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud's years in Africa, Somebody Else (also published by Eland), was awarded the Hawthornden Prize. The Reckoning, an investigation of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, won the James Tait Black Prize for biography and the Crime Writers' Association 'Gold Dagger' for non-fiction. His other books include an acclaimed biography of Leonardo da Vinci; a reconstruction of a sixteenth-century expedition in search of El Dorado; and the travel classic The Fruit Palace, about life among the drug-smugglers of Colombia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sussex.