Sample Chapters

Century Dust: "Eyes embarrassed behind his glasses, he reaches into a briefcase and hands me what I can tell is a prized possession: a glossy color photo of a .357 Magnum, cut out of some gun enthusiast's magazine. The picture is as lavishly shot as any pornography, light dripping off the long black barrel. While I stare at this, not sure what to feel, the Chinese kid says to me the only English words I've heard from him or his friends: "America," he says, pointing to the gun. "Very beautiful."

Homage: "The temple courtyard is carpeted with shreds of red paper, the trash of thousands of firecrackers. All around me people are in trances: the gibbering ghost-woman, a shrunken old man shaking and tottering, another man flailing himself bloody with strands of barbed wire. Young men stumble and sway drunkenly, deep in trance, while lion-dogs stomp out a dance to the never ending clatter of the gongs."

Search: "To the bedroom, while the bulgogi got cold on the dining room table. Offering me her mouth to kiss she asked, “Wanna lick an ashtray?"

Green Tea*: "Japan is a wonder of contradictions — a spaceport to the next century; a playland of miniature buildings and smiling people; a quiet mountain temple, home to the most fragile, deliberate aesthetic I have ever seen."

*Honorable mention, 2009 Solas Awards

The Raj is Dead*: "Airport security in New Delhi is incredible; the only place I've ever seen where they X-ray your baggage as you're getting off the plane."

*3rd prize winner, 2012 Hackney Literary Awards