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The Cuttlefish
Armed with a finished memoir and a hotshot agent, aspiring writer Zach Sullivan is convinced his big break is just around the corner. Until then, he takes a job teaching at the Bichy Bee English Institute in the East Asian island nation of Sukhan. Between bouts of relentless savaging by imps in the classroom, he navigates the kaleidoscopic side streets of the capital, Paigan, along with the strange ways of his newfound home. Zach spends his carefree days and nights in a manic blur—cruising on his 100cc Zhiwoon Super City Chipmunk scooter, downing dumplings, watching the Paigan Cloud Bank Bugbears baseball team, and carousing with his fellow degenerate expats, all while awash in an ocean of Beer Lai Lai, Sukhan’s national brew. However, just when he thinks he’s perfected the art of misbehaving abroad, things go south, and he eventually finds himself banged up in Sukhan’s toughest National Correctional Facility Number 4, nicknamed “the Cuttlefish.”
A comic adventure packed with attitude and verve, The Cuttlefish skewers the excesses of ESL expat life while also poking fun at the paint-by-numbers sin and redemption story of getting locked up abroad.
“The Cuttlefish is by no small measure the best novel about ESL teachers in East Asia. In fact, it is probably the most engaging, perceptive, and realistic depiction of life as a Westerner in Asia for several decades. Tharp has set his novel in a fictional country, yet he has captured life in a certain part of the world so well that it very nearly gave me PTSD. The schools, bars, restaurants, streets, and even prisons he writes about are depicted with an astounding accuracy, yet somehow infused with comedy and empathy. It is a world that has long deserved the fictional treatment and finally we have it—a must-read novel for those who know and love (or are merely frustrated by) the strange life one leads in this beautiful but chaotic part of the world.”
— David S. Wills, author of High White The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism
“Incredibly vivid and very funny.” — Brian Aylward, standup comedian
A comic adventure packed with attitude and verve, The Cuttlefish skewers the excesses of ESL expat life while also poking fun at the paint-by-numbers sin and redemption story of getting locked up abroad.
“The Cuttlefish is by no small measure the best novel about ESL teachers in East Asia. In fact, it is probably the most engaging, perceptive, and realistic depiction of life as a Westerner in Asia for several decades. Tharp has set his novel in a fictional country, yet he has captured life in a certain part of the world so well that it very nearly gave me PTSD. The schools, bars, restaurants, streets, and even prisons he writes about are depicted with an astounding accuracy, yet somehow infused with comedy and empathy. It is a world that has long deserved the fictional treatment and finally we have it—a must-read novel for those who know and love (or are merely frustrated by) the strange life one leads in this beautiful but chaotic part of the world.”
— David S. Wills, author of High White The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism
“Incredibly vivid and very funny.” — Brian Aylward, standup comedian
318 pages, Paperback
Published May 29, 2025
3 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Chris Tharp
3 books12 followersOriginally hailing from Olympia, Washington, Chris Tharp has called Korea home since 2004. He's a regular contributor to National Geographic Traveller UK as well as Asia Times. His award-winning writing has also appeared at Matador Network, The San Diego Reader, Green Mountains Review, and Foreign Literary Journal.
Chris has written two books, "Dispatches from the Peninsula: Six Years in South Korea" and "The Worst Motorcycle in Laos: Rough Travels in Asia," both of which are published by Signal 8 Press out of Hong Kong.
He lives in Busan with his wife and a fluctuating number of animals.
Chris has written two books, "Dispatches from the Peninsula: Six Years in South Korea" and "The Worst Motorcycle in Laos: Rough Travels in Asia," both of which are published by Signal 8 Press out of Hong Kong.
He lives in Busan with his wife and a fluctuating number of animals.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 21, 2025
Laced with spot on depictions of the slacker teacher in East Asia, Chris Tharp paints a vivid portrait of expat life in Sukhan. Through a well-paced story capturing so many quintessential experiences of those who find their way to East Asia to teach, Tharp introduces us to the laugh out loud journey of Zach Sullivan. We are transported through the sights, sounds and smells of the streets of Paigan. Smelling of shanki and soaked in beer Lai Lai, we meet our hero stumbling his way through a life filled with comfort and devoid of purpose.
A perennial failure, Zach scarcely finds himself in a predicament he can't make worse. Through a combination of misadventure and bold stupidity he finds himself high and dry in a world of trouble. The story's climax comes as a twisting and turning route that introduces a cast of both the usual suspects and completely unexpected characters. Zach world gets a good shake and we have the luxury of following along.
A perennial failure, Zach scarcely finds himself in a predicament he can't make worse. Through a combination of misadventure and bold stupidity he finds himself high and dry in a world of trouble. The story's climax comes as a twisting and turning route that introduces a cast of both the usual suspects and completely unexpected characters. Zach world gets a good shake and we have the luxury of following along.
November 18, 2025
Trying not to see too much of myself in the main character (O.O)
Because that would be missing the point. Zach is definitely a parody of the liberal-arts-educated aspiring writer who finds themself awash on the shores of a foreign country simply because they can't think of anything else to do and they want to feel some adventure in their cushy, coastal life. The tragedy in Zach's story makes his terrible choices a lot more sympathetic, and judging by the very specific cultural references, I think Tharp might be engaging in at least a little self-deprecation.
The plot was secondary to the description of expat life, for me. Definitely captures the "what the fuck am I doing here" and "did that really actually truly happen" feeling that you can only get abroad. Tharp world builds pretty well—writing a fictional East Asian country is hard enough, I really enjoyed the history and politics injected into the mix that could very plausibly have actually happened. If Sukhan existed, the Japanese would definitely have tried to take them over.
Yearning for something that gives me as much joy as a box of shanki does to Zach.
Because that would be missing the point. Zach is definitely a parody of the liberal-arts-educated aspiring writer who finds themself awash on the shores of a foreign country simply because they can't think of anything else to do and they want to feel some adventure in their cushy, coastal life. The tragedy in Zach's story makes his terrible choices a lot more sympathetic, and judging by the very specific cultural references, I think Tharp might be engaging in at least a little self-deprecation.
The plot was secondary to the description of expat life, for me. Definitely captures the "what the fuck am I doing here" and "did that really actually truly happen" feeling that you can only get abroad. Tharp world builds pretty well—writing a fictional East Asian country is hard enough, I really enjoyed the history and politics injected into the mix that could very plausibly have actually happened. If Sukhan existed, the Japanese would definitely have tried to take them over.
Yearning for something that gives me as much joy as a box of shanki does to Zach.
October 6, 2025
The English teacher in Asia deserves a good satirical novel, and at the start of this one, author Chris Tharp dives straight into the heart of the matter:
The plot follows an American teaching in a cram school in a fictional, East Asian nation called Sukhan, which is based roughly 60% on South Korea, 25% on Taiwan, 10% on Laos, and 5% on rest-of-Asia. (My guess is that Tharp did not want to offend the often xenophobic Koreans, as he's lived there since 2004.) It's an absurdist take on English teacher life, where a crisis of aimlessness, alcoholism, and a creeping sense of displacement become compounded by the author's personal failure to become a published author. This dream––though the author doesn't necessarily say this––is about gaining validation from "home", which is to say the Western metropole, for who else would read and praise his writing? Success would prove those voices wrong (mostly local women) who repeatedly call him "a complete loser" who is living a "life without consequence"; and say that by leaving home he has only displacing his loser-ness in a place where he can delude himself by enjoying a healthy dose of "white priviledge." But a book deal, now that would validate everything––it would not only give him status back home, it would also cement his position in this weird Asian frontier. In other words, he'd have his have his cake and eat it too.
This half-assed crisis of meaning pushes our English teacher anti-hero into the wonderful contrivance of a truly hairbrained scheme, smuggling drugs in the hope of getting busted. This would then provide him with what his literary agent says would give him the needed "life experience" to write something sellable. I loved this. It's a smart and pretty bonkers parody of all those surviving-Thai-prison memoirs that hit bookshelves in the late 1990s and early 2000s: The Bangkok Hilton, etc.
As for the plot of the Cuttlefish, I'll stop there to avoid spoilers. I'll just say that Tharp is a good comic writer and kept me cracking droll smiles throughout. But as the scenarios become more imaginative, the novel unfortunately devolved into the literary equivalent of an Adam Sandler movie , i.e. full of cliches and about a protagonist who's impervious to any sort of deep transformation. (Think of Sandler in his "Oh geez" moment in Happy Gilmore 2, after he's pissed away his fame and fortune.) In a few ways, the book reminds me of Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan or DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, two other absurdist adventures, in which Joe Schmoe heroes hit rock bottom, then "figure it out" and proceed to win the game of life with nice tight endings you can wrap a bow around. In other words, The Cuttlefish never reaches the deep and trenchant ironies of something like Cyril Conolly's The Rock Pool, which, if you've never read it, is an early masterpiece of expat lampoonery.
Be that as it may, Tharp's opening on English teacher culture is pretty masterful when it comes to capturing the characters, dialogue (he's particularly gifted here), and comic absurdity of the life. For that alone, I can heartily recommend this––it's a fun, breezy read and especially worth it if you're into expat fiction.
"Do you even have an MA?” “Nah, mate, I just walked into that interview and when they asked me, ‘What are your qualifications?’ I looked at them and said, ‘I’m tall, and I’m white.’ They hired me on the spot.
The plot follows an American teaching in a cram school in a fictional, East Asian nation called Sukhan, which is based roughly 60% on South Korea, 25% on Taiwan, 10% on Laos, and 5% on rest-of-Asia. (My guess is that Tharp did not want to offend the often xenophobic Koreans, as he's lived there since 2004.) It's an absurdist take on English teacher life, where a crisis of aimlessness, alcoholism, and a creeping sense of displacement become compounded by the author's personal failure to become a published author. This dream––though the author doesn't necessarily say this––is about gaining validation from "home", which is to say the Western metropole, for who else would read and praise his writing? Success would prove those voices wrong (mostly local women) who repeatedly call him "a complete loser" who is living a "life without consequence"; and say that by leaving home he has only displacing his loser-ness in a place where he can delude himself by enjoying a healthy dose of "white priviledge." But a book deal, now that would validate everything––it would not only give him status back home, it would also cement his position in this weird Asian frontier. In other words, he'd have his have his cake and eat it too.
This half-assed crisis of meaning pushes our English teacher anti-hero into the wonderful contrivance of a truly hairbrained scheme, smuggling drugs in the hope of getting busted. This would then provide him with what his literary agent says would give him the needed "life experience" to write something sellable. I loved this. It's a smart and pretty bonkers parody of all those surviving-Thai-prison memoirs that hit bookshelves in the late 1990s and early 2000s: The Bangkok Hilton, etc.
As for the plot of the Cuttlefish, I'll stop there to avoid spoilers. I'll just say that Tharp is a good comic writer and kept me cracking droll smiles throughout. But as the scenarios become more imaginative, the novel unfortunately devolved into the literary equivalent of an Adam Sandler movie , i.e. full of cliches and about a protagonist who's impervious to any sort of deep transformation. (Think of Sandler in his "Oh geez" moment in Happy Gilmore 2, after he's pissed away his fame and fortune.) In a few ways, the book reminds me of Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan or DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little, two other absurdist adventures, in which Joe Schmoe heroes hit rock bottom, then "figure it out" and proceed to win the game of life with nice tight endings you can wrap a bow around. In other words, The Cuttlefish never reaches the deep and trenchant ironies of something like Cyril Conolly's The Rock Pool, which, if you've never read it, is an early masterpiece of expat lampoonery.
Be that as it may, Tharp's opening on English teacher culture is pretty masterful when it comes to capturing the characters, dialogue (he's particularly gifted here), and comic absurdity of the life. For that alone, I can heartily recommend this––it's a fun, breezy read and especially worth it if you're into expat fiction.
June 30, 2025
This humorous novel successfully combines two of my favourite sub-genres:
1. The misadventures of a slacker English teacher in East-Asia.
2. A locked up abroad story.
Our antihero, Zach, is an American English teacher in the East Asian country Sukhan, which lies somewhere in the East China Sea. Sukhan has something of its own flavour given the geography and history author Chris Tharp creates, but it’s also clear which nation it’s a fictional stand in for. As East-Asian countries can be sensitive about how they are represented, it’s understandable why the author created Sukhan. Tharp has taken the time to lovingly describe the cityscapes of Sukhan with their neon lit, traffic clogged streets.
Like many English teachers drifting through endless classes with kids who view them as a pet bear, Zach has vague dreams of a career in the arts. In his case it’s writing. Trapped in a cycle of cultural shock, binge drinking, and self-loathing, Zach becomes desperate and goes to extreme lengths to try and kick-start his writing career. While most readers will be unsympathetic to Zach’s struggles. I found some pathos in them because his lifestyle isn’t a million miles from one I once experienced. At one stage, a young Korean woman tells Zach what a loser he is in no uncertain terms.
Supporting Zach is a large cast of dodgy characters. I had a couple of favourites. One was Buck, the Vietnam vet selling weed in Thailand. He’s lonely enough that he invites customers to his house to enjoy a home-cooked meal. Mr Schwa also cracked me up. Schwa is Zach’s loaded private student whose dad started manufacturing artificial limbs when Sukhan was a war-torn nation and hence made a mint. Mr Schwa is a good old school conservative, calling out the moral degeneracy of the younger generation while shouting Zach booze and hookers.
The book becomes something of an action thriller, but isn’t without deep insights about the kind of life Zach and his ilk lead. Adding an action-based plot, filled with baseball and restrained violence, to the struggles of a Westerner with self-esteem issues in a strange land is a winner—and should get the novel a wider readership.
1. The misadventures of a slacker English teacher in East-Asia.
2. A locked up abroad story.
Our antihero, Zach, is an American English teacher in the East Asian country Sukhan, which lies somewhere in the East China Sea. Sukhan has something of its own flavour given the geography and history author Chris Tharp creates, but it’s also clear which nation it’s a fictional stand in for. As East-Asian countries can be sensitive about how they are represented, it’s understandable why the author created Sukhan. Tharp has taken the time to lovingly describe the cityscapes of Sukhan with their neon lit, traffic clogged streets.
Like many English teachers drifting through endless classes with kids who view them as a pet bear, Zach has vague dreams of a career in the arts. In his case it’s writing. Trapped in a cycle of cultural shock, binge drinking, and self-loathing, Zach becomes desperate and goes to extreme lengths to try and kick-start his writing career. While most readers will be unsympathetic to Zach’s struggles. I found some pathos in them because his lifestyle isn’t a million miles from one I once experienced. At one stage, a young Korean woman tells Zach what a loser he is in no uncertain terms.
Supporting Zach is a large cast of dodgy characters. I had a couple of favourites. One was Buck, the Vietnam vet selling weed in Thailand. He’s lonely enough that he invites customers to his house to enjoy a home-cooked meal. Mr Schwa also cracked me up. Schwa is Zach’s loaded private student whose dad started manufacturing artificial limbs when Sukhan was a war-torn nation and hence made a mint. Mr Schwa is a good old school conservative, calling out the moral degeneracy of the younger generation while shouting Zach booze and hookers.
The book becomes something of an action thriller, but isn’t without deep insights about the kind of life Zach and his ilk lead. Adding an action-based plot, filled with baseball and restrained violence, to the struggles of a Westerner with self-esteem issues in a strange land is a winner—and should get the novel a wider readership.
June 18, 2025
I was lucky to get a pre-publication copy of this book and I enjoyed it tremendously. I lived in South Korea long ago and even though this book is technically not set there (it takes place in a fictional country), I was instantly transported back to that strange land. It was, in fact, a huge dose of nostalgia. Tharp has depicted that country and described the experience of living and teaching there incredibly well. However, this is not a navel-gazing meditation on the expat experience. It is a fast-paced story that moves well beyond the classroom and into events you'd more likely associate with a thriller or disaster story.
September 29, 2025
I have been a fan of Tharp's travel writing since he published his first book back in 2011. It was a joy to read his first work of fiction. The book kept me fully engaged and I read it very quickly. There were several times I laughed out loud and the climactic ending was super satisfying! I highly encourage anyone to dive into this novel and check out his other books.
August 20, 2025
As an expat, I've known people like these characters. The kind of people I never would have met if not for being an expat.
Fun read. All of the pieces fit together in unexpected ways.
The dialogs are especially strong. The author develops characters effectively.
Fun read. All of the pieces fit together in unexpected ways.
The dialogs are especially strong. The author develops characters effectively.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews