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Hunters in the Dark
From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense
Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.
And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events-- involving a bag of “jinxed” money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, and a rich doctor’s daughter-- that changes Robert’s life forever.
Hunters in the Dark is a sophisticated game of cat and mouse redolent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith, where identities are blurred, greed trumps kindness, and karma is ruthless. Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns, suffused with the steamy heat and pervasive superstition of the Cambodian jungle, and unafraid to confront difficult questions about the machinations of fate, this is a masterful novel that confirms Lawrence Osborne’s reputation as one of our finest contemporary writers.
Adrift in Cambodia and eager to side-step a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher, 28-year-old Englishman Robert Grieve decides to go missing. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.
And on that first night, a small windfall precipitates a chain of events-- involving a bag of “jinxed” money, a suave American, a trunk full of heroin, a hustler taxi driver, and a rich doctor’s daughter-- that changes Robert’s life forever.
Hunters in the Dark is a sophisticated game of cat and mouse redolent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith, where identities are blurred, greed trumps kindness, and karma is ruthless. Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns, suffused with the steamy heat and pervasive superstition of the Cambodian jungle, and unafraid to confront difficult questions about the machinations of fate, this is a masterful novel that confirms Lawrence Osborne’s reputation as one of our finest contemporary writers.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2015
171 people are currently reading
2678 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Osborne
38 books581 followersLawrence Osborne is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels, including The Forgiven (now a major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain), and Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel, a New York Times Notable Book and nominated for an Edgar Award, as well as six books of nonfiction, including Bangkok Days. He has led a nomadic life, living in Paris, New York, Mexico, and Istanbul, and he currently resides in Bangkok.
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August 30, 2022
OMBRE ROSSE
I cacciatori nel buio sono:
gli irrequieti cortigiani della corte imperiale del Giappone medioevale, sempre a caccia di vantaggi personali. Ma anche, della felicità. Era il suo modo preferito per riassumere i giovani contemporanei.
Così potrebbe definirsi Robert, il nostro protagonista. Se si aggiunge una nuance di sbandamento, di deriva, di vuoto di senso per la sua esistenza di bianco occidentale.
E tale è probabilmente anche Sophal, la giovane khmer due anni più giovane di Robert, alla quale lui dovrebbe insegnare l’inglese, lingua che lei parla dall’età di cinque anni.
La foto in copertina
Tali, forse, sono gli altri due protagonisti, la coppia formata dall’americano Simon, anche lui forse alla ricerca di un senso alla sua vita, che nella terra dei khmer ha dilapidato quasi tutta la sua eredità di antica famiglia del New England e si è legato a maglia doppia all’ago di una siringa, e la sua compagna locale, Sothea, che vorrebbe studiare veterinaria, ben più giovane ma altrettanto schiava dell’eroina.
Eppure, più che cacciare sembrano brancolare nel buio, ma anche nella luce.
Altrettanto viene da credere facciano i cervi nella foresta di Pailin, al confine thailandese: solo che le povere bestie non hanno scelta, la terra nasconde le mine lasciate dai khmer rossi, ogni tanto ne calpestano una e saltano in aria in una nuvola di sangue.
Non c’è violenza nell’aria: solo un confuso senso di inquietudine e attesa.
Vero: il senso di inquietudine e di attesa è forte, il finale è un crescendo.
Non vero: la violenza è nell’aria, e poi nelle cose, nei fatti. Al punto che al posto del secondo uomo, l’americano eroinomane e spacciatore, subentra un losco poliziotto locale.
Osborne è bravo a costruire un’atmosfera che si taglia a fette nelle descrizioni della natura cambogiana, rigogliosa e lussureggiante, densa e avviluppante, sinistra ma ammaliante sotto cieli cangianti, nuvole dense, pioggia battente, calura, nebbie, umidità, sudore…
Atmosfera rafforzata dalla suspense, dal senso di minaccia, dall’attesa, dal pericolo che incombe e può manifestarsi in forme multiple.
Anche la pesante mortifera eredità genocidaria di quella terra che ogni tanto si manifesta in brevi descrizioni che generano raccapriccio e orrore, che è parte del paese e del paesaggio, della storia e dell’esistenza di alcuni personaggi (tutti quelli al di sopra di una certa età). Si tratta di una nazione e di un popolo che in tre/quattro anni ha massacrato un quarto dei suoi abitanti, difficile ignorarlo.
Echi di Graham Greene, inevitabili quando la storia si tinge di thriller e ha ambientazione esotica – echi di Patricia Highsmith nel personaggio americano: e nel cambio d’identità, nello sceglierne una nuova che comporta rischio, peraltro preferibile al vuoto della precedente esistenza, ho ritrovato il capolavoro di Antonioni Professione reporter - The Passenger.
La giungla cambogiana non lo aveva mai fatto sentire a suo agio. Aveva una profondità e una densità di velluto che faceva pensare a qualcosa di nascosto e trattenuto. Trovava piacevoli gli uccelli che gli parlavano senza dirgli niente. Un regno di rettili e dinosauri, musicale e melodioso ma anche pieno di fantasmi.
https://tommasopincio.net/2017/09/10/...
Vann Nath è famoso per i suoi dipinti sulla prigione (di sterminio) S-21 di Tuol Seng a Phnom Penh. Vann Nath è uno dei soli sette sopravvissuti dell’S-21. Nei ringraziamenti Osborne dice che il romanzo “è scaturito dalle lunghe conversazioni nel suo studio, sulle amache sopra il suo ristorante”.
I cacciatori nel buio sono:
gli irrequieti cortigiani della corte imperiale del Giappone medioevale, sempre a caccia di vantaggi personali. Ma anche, della felicità. Era il suo modo preferito per riassumere i giovani contemporanei.
Così potrebbe definirsi Robert, il nostro protagonista. Se si aggiunge una nuance di sbandamento, di deriva, di vuoto di senso per la sua esistenza di bianco occidentale.
E tale è probabilmente anche Sophal, la giovane khmer due anni più giovane di Robert, alla quale lui dovrebbe insegnare l’inglese, lingua che lei parla dall’età di cinque anni.
La foto in copertina
Tali, forse, sono gli altri due protagonisti, la coppia formata dall’americano Simon, anche lui forse alla ricerca di un senso alla sua vita, che nella terra dei khmer ha dilapidato quasi tutta la sua eredità di antica famiglia del New England e si è legato a maglia doppia all’ago di una siringa, e la sua compagna locale, Sothea, che vorrebbe studiare veterinaria, ben più giovane ma altrettanto schiava dell’eroina.
Eppure, più che cacciare sembrano brancolare nel buio, ma anche nella luce.
Altrettanto viene da credere facciano i cervi nella foresta di Pailin, al confine thailandese: solo che le povere bestie non hanno scelta, la terra nasconde le mine lasciate dai khmer rossi, ogni tanto ne calpestano una e saltano in aria in una nuvola di sangue.
Non c’è violenza nell’aria: solo un confuso senso di inquietudine e attesa.
Vero: il senso di inquietudine e di attesa è forte, il finale è un crescendo.
Non vero: la violenza è nell’aria, e poi nelle cose, nei fatti. Al punto che al posto del secondo uomo, l’americano eroinomane e spacciatore, subentra un losco poliziotto locale.
Osborne è bravo a costruire un’atmosfera che si taglia a fette nelle descrizioni della natura cambogiana, rigogliosa e lussureggiante, densa e avviluppante, sinistra ma ammaliante sotto cieli cangianti, nuvole dense, pioggia battente, calura, nebbie, umidità, sudore…
Atmosfera rafforzata dalla suspense, dal senso di minaccia, dall’attesa, dal pericolo che incombe e può manifestarsi in forme multiple.
Anche la pesante mortifera eredità genocidaria di quella terra che ogni tanto si manifesta in brevi descrizioni che generano raccapriccio e orrore, che è parte del paese e del paesaggio, della storia e dell’esistenza di alcuni personaggi (tutti quelli al di sopra di una certa età). Si tratta di una nazione e di un popolo che in tre/quattro anni ha massacrato un quarto dei suoi abitanti, difficile ignorarlo.
Echi di Graham Greene, inevitabili quando la storia si tinge di thriller e ha ambientazione esotica – echi di Patricia Highsmith nel personaggio americano: e nel cambio d’identità, nello sceglierne una nuova che comporta rischio, peraltro preferibile al vuoto della precedente esistenza, ho ritrovato il capolavoro di Antonioni Professione reporter - The Passenger.
La giungla cambogiana non lo aveva mai fatto sentire a suo agio. Aveva una profondità e una densità di velluto che faceva pensare a qualcosa di nascosto e trattenuto. Trovava piacevoli gli uccelli che gli parlavano senza dirgli niente. Un regno di rettili e dinosauri, musicale e melodioso ma anche pieno di fantasmi.
https://tommasopincio.net/2017/09/10/...
Vann Nath è famoso per i suoi dipinti sulla prigione (di sterminio) S-21 di Tuol Seng a Phnom Penh. Vann Nath è uno dei soli sette sopravvissuti dell’S-21. Nei ringraziamenti Osborne dice che il romanzo “è scaturito dalle lunghe conversazioni nel suo studio, sulle amache sopra il suo ristorante”.
September 27, 2015
East meets West in this subtly compelling and quiet thriller that explores the innocent abroad theme. In darkly lush and shady colors, this noir-esque novel follows Robert, an aimless twenty-eight-year-old teacher from Sussex, as he intersects with several Khmer characters in Cambodia, as well as a charming American sociopath that befriends him. The alluring, extroverted Khmer woman that Robert meets in Phnom Penh fills his lonely days with desire and desired companionship. Little do they know what is on their periphery, closing in ever more steadily.
Robert feels confined in his middle-class life in England, and often finds liberation in his travels, but now even all of Europe seems the same to him. In the opening of the novel, Robert has crossed the border from Thailand to Cambodia, and by good fortune wins $2,000 at a back-water casino. He’s decided to stay for a while and be a wandering ex-pat. Luck and chance underpin this novel in many ways, as does the intersection of cultures and different classes of people. This is the land still recovering from genocide by the Khmer Rouge, in which 25% of the population was extinguished in a few short years. It is a land believed by its people to be haunted by ghosts. Robert, who eschews the supernatural, will often be confronted by the significance of spirits.
“Karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one’s little calculations irrelevant.”
And most of the characters are striving to gain by their calculations. The American, Simon, outwits Robert with opium and alcohol. A cash-poor driver, Ouska, with a handicapped wife, plans ways to make easy money, especially from tourists. Then there’s the corrupt policeman, Davuth, who attempts to fight back the troubling ghosts that haunt him back from when he was a member of the Pol Pot regime. He’s eternally on the take.
As Robert settles into Phnom Penh, the reader is drenched in a kind of torpor, one that actually adds a penetrating suspense. It isn’t an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but its noir gloom is always pulling at the edges. The prose borders on the surreal at times, with its trance-like sluggishness that seduces with its elegant descriptions of earth and ennui:
“Here the trees sticking out of the surface were white as bone and draped with creepers. Driftwood floated idly past them…strands of dark yellow flowers like garlands tossed from an abandoned wedding feast…the dead fish lying on their sides in the sun, the crowns of interlaced branches… …On the banks lay upturned little boats, knee-high shrines and men fishing with poles at the edge of pale and impenetrable mangroves.”
The plot’s precision, and the characters that swirl lethargically around each other, create an intoxicating, humid atmosphere. The deliberately passive pace captured the stifling presence of things unseen, shadowed, and foreshadowed. But, however, lazily we get there, there is nothing lazy about this author, who can turn a meandering mood to sudden violence, and the twists are surprising and satisfying. This is my first Osborne book, but it won't be my last.
Robert feels confined in his middle-class life in England, and often finds liberation in his travels, but now even all of Europe seems the same to him. In the opening of the novel, Robert has crossed the border from Thailand to Cambodia, and by good fortune wins $2,000 at a back-water casino. He’s decided to stay for a while and be a wandering ex-pat. Luck and chance underpin this novel in many ways, as does the intersection of cultures and different classes of people. This is the land still recovering from genocide by the Khmer Rouge, in which 25% of the population was extinguished in a few short years. It is a land believed by its people to be haunted by ghosts. Robert, who eschews the supernatural, will often be confronted by the significance of spirits.
“Karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one’s little calculations irrelevant.”
And most of the characters are striving to gain by their calculations. The American, Simon, outwits Robert with opium and alcohol. A cash-poor driver, Ouska, with a handicapped wife, plans ways to make easy money, especially from tourists. Then there’s the corrupt policeman, Davuth, who attempts to fight back the troubling ghosts that haunt him back from when he was a member of the Pol Pot regime. He’s eternally on the take.
As Robert settles into Phnom Penh, the reader is drenched in a kind of torpor, one that actually adds a penetrating suspense. It isn’t an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but its noir gloom is always pulling at the edges. The prose borders on the surreal at times, with its trance-like sluggishness that seduces with its elegant descriptions of earth and ennui:
“Here the trees sticking out of the surface were white as bone and draped with creepers. Driftwood floated idly past them…strands of dark yellow flowers like garlands tossed from an abandoned wedding feast…the dead fish lying on their sides in the sun, the crowns of interlaced branches… …On the banks lay upturned little boats, knee-high shrines and men fishing with poles at the edge of pale and impenetrable mangroves.”
The plot’s precision, and the characters that swirl lethargically around each other, create an intoxicating, humid atmosphere. The deliberately passive pace captured the stifling presence of things unseen, shadowed, and foreshadowed. But, however, lazily we get there, there is nothing lazy about this author, who can turn a meandering mood to sudden violence, and the twists are surprising and satisfying. This is my first Osborne book, but it won't be my last.
August 27, 2021
“Gli uccelli cantavano nel bosco, ripetendo richiami a cantilena come le are, e un milione di gocce di pioggia che cadevano si fusero in un unico suono. Era strano come gli alberi continuassero a gocciolare per molto tempo dopo che aveva smesso di piovere. Un paese come un mulino ad acqua, come una massa di sonagli mossi dal vento.”
È la Cambogia, è quell’estremo Oriente pieno di fascino e di mistero dove molti occidentali inquieti ogni anno vanno a cercare la più prosaica delle avventure, ma anche qualcosa di indefinibile che colmi un vuoto esistenziale, che cambi la direzione della loro vita. E dove spesso si perdono.
Fra questi c’è Robert Grieve, giovane insegnante inglese che compensa la mediocrità incolore della sua quotidianità nel grigio Sussex con entusiasmanti viaggi estivi. Quando dalla Thailandia arriva in un piccolo paese cambogiano Robert sente, sia pure in modo vago e confuso, che il momento per dare una svolta alla sua vita forse è arrivato, complice una inaspettata e cospicua vincita al casinò.
“Aprì gli occhi ed era felice. Il girovago sa sempre quando è arrivato abbastanza lontano dal sistema per assaggiare il brivido di farcela contro le probabilità. Se fosse arrivata l’inondazione, lui avrebbe galleggiato come una di quelle barchette di carta che anche i bambini sanno fare.”
Da questo momento inizia il viaggio meticoloso e pieno di insidie attraverso la mente e le azioni un po’ casuali (o karmiche?) del protagonista, intorno al quale si muovono altri personaggi le cui motivazioni profonde impariamo a conoscere via via che la narrazione si fa intensa e complessa. Non solo barang (turisti occidentali), ma anche esponenti della popolazione khmer, appartenenti a differenti classi sociali. Non solo la contemporaneità dei luoghi e dei tempi, ma anche la dolorosa memoria della dittatura di Pol Pot, su cui si aprono -nella rievocazione dei personaggi- obliqui squarci di orrore.
Con implacabile procedimento narrativo Osborne costruisce un congegno perfetto che avvinghia il lettore, lo trascina in un territorio dove il noir e il romanzo psicologico si fondono in originale connubio e che, oltre a immergerci nell’ammaliante aura esotica, ricorda a tratti le atmosfere di Simenon e più ancora di Seicho Matsumoto.
C’è poi quella che è sicuramente la peculiarità di Osborne, scrittore e viaggiatore: il confronto fra due civiltà, due modi di pensare, due storie molto diverse e per certi versi contrapposte, una costellazione di simboli e di credenze che si fronteggiano ma anche, in fondo, le caratteristiche che ci accomunano tutti, come esseri umani, nel bene e nel male.
Ma chi sono i cacciatori nel buio?
L’espressione viene dalla storia e indica i cortigiani dell’imperatore che, nel Giappone medievale, erano sempre a caccia di vantaggi personali, ma, per estensione, anche tutti coloro che vanno cercando se stessi e quindi la felicità.
E qui anche noi, a nostro modo inseguitori di identità e di felicità, ci immergeremo nelle molte e diverse declinazioni del buio. Per giungere infine alla luce? Chissà.
È la Cambogia, è quell’estremo Oriente pieno di fascino e di mistero dove molti occidentali inquieti ogni anno vanno a cercare la più prosaica delle avventure, ma anche qualcosa di indefinibile che colmi un vuoto esistenziale, che cambi la direzione della loro vita. E dove spesso si perdono.
Fra questi c’è Robert Grieve, giovane insegnante inglese che compensa la mediocrità incolore della sua quotidianità nel grigio Sussex con entusiasmanti viaggi estivi. Quando dalla Thailandia arriva in un piccolo paese cambogiano Robert sente, sia pure in modo vago e confuso, che il momento per dare una svolta alla sua vita forse è arrivato, complice una inaspettata e cospicua vincita al casinò.
“Aprì gli occhi ed era felice. Il girovago sa sempre quando è arrivato abbastanza lontano dal sistema per assaggiare il brivido di farcela contro le probabilità. Se fosse arrivata l’inondazione, lui avrebbe galleggiato come una di quelle barchette di carta che anche i bambini sanno fare.”
Da questo momento inizia il viaggio meticoloso e pieno di insidie attraverso la mente e le azioni un po’ casuali (o karmiche?) del protagonista, intorno al quale si muovono altri personaggi le cui motivazioni profonde impariamo a conoscere via via che la narrazione si fa intensa e complessa. Non solo barang (turisti occidentali), ma anche esponenti della popolazione khmer, appartenenti a differenti classi sociali. Non solo la contemporaneità dei luoghi e dei tempi, ma anche la dolorosa memoria della dittatura di Pol Pot, su cui si aprono -nella rievocazione dei personaggi- obliqui squarci di orrore.
Con implacabile procedimento narrativo Osborne costruisce un congegno perfetto che avvinghia il lettore, lo trascina in un territorio dove il noir e il romanzo psicologico si fondono in originale connubio e che, oltre a immergerci nell’ammaliante aura esotica, ricorda a tratti le atmosfere di Simenon e più ancora di Seicho Matsumoto.
C’è poi quella che è sicuramente la peculiarità di Osborne, scrittore e viaggiatore: il confronto fra due civiltà, due modi di pensare, due storie molto diverse e per certi versi contrapposte, una costellazione di simboli e di credenze che si fronteggiano ma anche, in fondo, le caratteristiche che ci accomunano tutti, come esseri umani, nel bene e nel male.
Ma chi sono i cacciatori nel buio?
L’espressione viene dalla storia e indica i cortigiani dell’imperatore che, nel Giappone medievale, erano sempre a caccia di vantaggi personali, ma, per estensione, anche tutti coloro che vanno cercando se stessi e quindi la felicità.
E qui anche noi, a nostro modo inseguitori di identità e di felicità, ci immergeremo nelle molte e diverse declinazioni del buio. Per giungere infine alla luce? Chissà.
March 3, 2024
Hunters in the Dark faked me out a few times about what it was. I thought I knew as early as chapter 4 for example, when Robert the brooding and repressed twenty-something Brit with untapped capacities for transgression meets, in the course of wandering Cambodia, Simon the thirty-something American Yale dropout, Simon deracinated yet thrumming with boundless confidence, mysteriously financially autonomous, and pretty clearly looking for a novice to tutor in the ways of Nietzschean self-actualization and god knows what else. Simon invites Robert back to his pad by the river, incidentally a mile-and-a-half away from any neighbors, and- maybe it was partly because I'd just rewatched the great 1963 British movie The Servant- but I was all set for the psychosexual shenanigans to begin, for Robert and Simon's relationship to take center stage and for the rest of the novel to pivot on the duality presented by these two characters. And maybe in a way it does. Except that.
, which was the first of a few loops the novel threw me for. I also of course had certain preconceptions based on the blurbs, whose most frequent comparisons were to Bowles and Greene. And as for the latter- yes, it's a Brit living in a foreign country, but, having only read two of Greene's novels, it seems to me that his characters were usually diplomats, spies, contractors, or someone getting caught up in related business, acting covertly upon the country in which they were spending time. Robert is much more like a Bowles character in his aimless drifting (even if Osborne takes greater pains than I remember Bowles ever bothering with to contextualize that drifting), covertly acted upon by forces more personal, existential and maybe even supernatural (depending on how you read certain aspects of this novel) than overtly political. But I was most reminded of Bowles by a scene of sudden violence at the side of a road- and then especially by the aftermath, the survivor of that violence fleeing on foot into a nearby field. Something about the thought of that character subjected to the indifference of the landscape, and about the way the perpetrator of the violence hears distant weeping, reminded me of the austere pitilessness of Bowles's novels.
I realize I still haven't actually described Hunters in the Dark, and I guess I don't feel very capable of doing so. It's a shapeshifter, and part of the fun for me was just taking the recommendation from a friend without much sense of what to expect or what limits the author might push. I'm glad I did, although I do have some misgivings about aspects of the story. Robert for example never struck me as an especially convincing character; despite (or maybe because of?) Osborne's attempts to contextualize and explain his travels, Robert always felt to me like a cog in the machine of Osborne's plot. Simon the American I found intriguing but pretty unbelievable, even if I suppose it's possible there really are people out there who have convinced themselves they're some twenty-first century combination of Gatsby and Kurtz. But it was mostly the Cambodian characters- Davuth, Sophal and Dr. Sar, in particular- who were much more persuasive, and who seemed genuine products of their environment and their history, whereas the connection between Robert's wanderings and the state of modern-day England seemed like something Osborne was merely paying vague lip-service to. There were also great descriptions and turns of phrase, page after page of them- "...the monuments of tenuous conquerers", for example, I'm not sure I've ever seen the word "tenuous" next to the word "conquerers"- but also a number of descriptions, often involving 2-3 different adjectives for one noun, that struck me as willfully counter-intuitive or contradictory.
The same friend who recommended this book (as well as a plethora of other Osborne novels) to me also recommended it to his mother-in-law, who in turn summarized the message of the book as "Don't steal." I laughed when my friend related this...and then thought about it. More like "Don't gamble", but...yes. It's very reductive, but maybe it helps clarify one of my misgivings about Osborne- that there was something moralistic about this novel, a sense that every character eventually got what they "deserved", which seems to me more common as a literary convention than in reality. And that maybe Osborne was more interested in the unspooling and revealing of this intricate web of karma than in some of the characters themselves. Maybe. I'm still wrestling with that. But I also can't deny that Osborne builds suspense masterfully, even (intentionally?) undermining opportunities for what seemed to me slam-dunk cliffhangers and opportunities for tantalizing character ambiguity in favor of a slower and more patient and more dread-inducing approach, leading to a genuinely sinister and impressive denouement. And if I have my doubts about that sense of karma or supernatural justice that hovers over the story, it's also on the other hand another thing that reminds me, favorably, of Bowles- the way this story feels old, as if related rather than invented, dictated by the inevitability of myth.
March 11, 2016
Fate. Karma. A circle of power and outcome. An Englishman, an American, more than a few Kymer characters. A few Kymer women amongst them, one who has returned home from Paris at 25 to revert to her child's role at home.
Slow and tedious start. As unattached and as without depth of feeling or connection as Robert himself. Bored and boring. After Greece and Iceland. And now Cambodia. What is the difference? Bored and life is so inconsequential! Lush, wet, green, misty and ruinous descriptions of landscapes. Oh yes, there they are. Well, what's there to eat, and where do I lay down. Smoking the biggest chore worth the motion.
Patience is greatly needed until you reach the point of seeing the shapes start to form.
It's a puzzle, within a box, within a chest, within a cement vault. But it's also a circle of luck and outcome too. Evil and goodness. Kindness and the worst assault. Up going down and power rising for one as it falls for another.
It's a man's story encompassed within male thoughts and motives. It's the English lit. teacher's comparisons to the Cambodian sensibilities of observance. It's the honesty of one night and the duplicity of another. It's a 28 year old changing his name and his hair. It's losing an identity and gaining an identity.
It's rich food and devastating drink. And drugs and sex. But never in crudity or within foul language. In fact, those are hidden. What shows is the home tailored linen.
Three endings in the last 20 pages too. Vishu and Buddha have their plans for this banang (white person). As they do for the one who has such memories of his Rouge and Revolution tasks. And never do they forget for a fly sweep those drivers and clerks who stand quietly still with downcast eyes.
On top of a stupendous plot, masterful language and nuance to all manners of conflict resolution, this also holds a favorite new word for me. I want to take a tuk-tuk.
And if that's not enough. There is a precise explanation of Pol Pot and the times. Where they came from, and where they went. And also the most exact example of naïve I think I have ever come across.
Don't follow the deer into the forest. There are mines. Like the hunted creatures- that can result in a red mist cloud.
Slow and tedious start. As unattached and as without depth of feeling or connection as Robert himself. Bored and boring. After Greece and Iceland. And now Cambodia. What is the difference? Bored and life is so inconsequential! Lush, wet, green, misty and ruinous descriptions of landscapes. Oh yes, there they are. Well, what's there to eat, and where do I lay down. Smoking the biggest chore worth the motion.
Patience is greatly needed until you reach the point of seeing the shapes start to form.
It's a puzzle, within a box, within a chest, within a cement vault. But it's also a circle of luck and outcome too. Evil and goodness. Kindness and the worst assault. Up going down and power rising for one as it falls for another.
It's a man's story encompassed within male thoughts and motives. It's the English lit. teacher's comparisons to the Cambodian sensibilities of observance. It's the honesty of one night and the duplicity of another. It's a 28 year old changing his name and his hair. It's losing an identity and gaining an identity.
It's rich food and devastating drink. And drugs and sex. But never in crudity or within foul language. In fact, those are hidden. What shows is the home tailored linen.
Three endings in the last 20 pages too. Vishu and Buddha have their plans for this banang (white person). As they do for the one who has such memories of his Rouge and Revolution tasks. And never do they forget for a fly sweep those drivers and clerks who stand quietly still with downcast eyes.
On top of a stupendous plot, masterful language and nuance to all manners of conflict resolution, this also holds a favorite new word for me. I want to take a tuk-tuk.
And if that's not enough. There is a precise explanation of Pol Pot and the times. Where they came from, and where they went. And also the most exact example of naïve I think I have ever come across.
Don't follow the deer into the forest. There are mines. Like the hunted creatures- that can result in a red mist cloud.
August 27, 2021
Robert, a 28 year old English school teacher with a totally boring, lonely and uneventful life, decides to spend his summer recess in Thailand. He goes on a side trip to gamble in Cambodia before returning home. What follows is a story which probably will not enhance the Cambodian tourist business, although it is an atmospheric and evocative description of a place I've never seen.
Robert becomes just another one of the unmoored and underfunded young Westerners who drift through the East in a drugged haze until their bodies wash up on the shore of a river and their bodies are plundered for heirloom jewelry.
This slow, meandering story is not a thriller in the conventional sense but I was always expecting something unpleasant to happen. It envelopes the reader in a general malaise, in an atmosphere full of heat, mosquitoes, humidity, history and lies. I think I might have gotten more out of the book if I were more familiar with Cambodian history.
While I enjoyed reading the book, I found that it became less and less believable as the coincidences and improbabilities piled up. Many of Robert's actions were inexplicable to me and I never found him truly believable. And it wasn't just Robert's actions that made no sense. There were a lot of characters whose actions can only be explained as a plot contrivance. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in reading more by this author.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
Robert becomes just another one of the unmoored and underfunded young Westerners who drift through the East in a drugged haze until their bodies wash up on the shore of a river and their bodies are plundered for heirloom jewelry.
This slow, meandering story is not a thriller in the conventional sense but I was always expecting something unpleasant to happen. It envelopes the reader in a general malaise, in an atmosphere full of heat, mosquitoes, humidity, history and lies. I think I might have gotten more out of the book if I were more familiar with Cambodian history.
While I enjoyed reading the book, I found that it became less and less believable as the coincidences and improbabilities piled up. Many of Robert's actions were inexplicable to me and I never found him truly believable. And it wasn't just Robert's actions that made no sense. There were a lot of characters whose actions can only be explained as a plot contrivance. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in reading more by this author.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
January 15, 2016
Just as an FYI to anyone who cares, the isbn I typed in is not for the kindle edition but for the hardcover UK edition I bought some time ago.
I was recently given a copy of the American release of this book by the publisher, and after picking it up and starting to read, it dawned on me that oopsie, I had already bought a copy from the UK.
So here's the info on the American release of this novel, which is actually quite good, extremely well written, and one I'm highly recommending:
Hogarth, 2016 (January)
9780553447347
I have to laugh at the difference in blurbs for this novel between the American release and the British release. The UK blurb calls it a "taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith..." and the US blurb says that book is "Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns." Neither blurb is quite accurate, and I had originally thought that Hunters in the Dark was a crime novel but that isn't exactly correct either. In fact, it's rather a difficult book to pigeonhole, but as it turns out, it is one I happened to like very much.
The main character in this novel is Robert Grieve, a young (not quite 30) British schoolteacher from a small village who realizes that his life is pretty much a dead end. In a bit of despair he travels to Thailand, wondering if he'll actually ever go back. While he has some sporadic contact with his parents (in whose eyes he doesn't measure up), he is contented with being alone, drifting along with the flow. The opening of this book finds him in a casino in Cambodia, where he parlays his leftover savings into a couple of thousand in winnings. Winning such a large amount of cash is just the first, but very important link in a chain of complex events that befall him and others on his periphery, beginning with an introduction to American expat Simon Beaucamp. Robert's driver Ouksa warns him against Simon, saying that he has a bad feeling about the guy, but Robert fails to heed his advice and winds up in a bit of trouble. I won't go any further than that re his time with the American, because it is the beginning of everything that's going to happen next and some things are just better left unsaid. Eventually though, Robert ends up in the capital of Phnom Penh, where he decides he should give English lessons to make money, and meets the beautiful Sophal, whose wealthy, upper-class father hires him to be her tutor. A stroke of fate (or perhaps more appropriately given the theme of this novel, karma) puts Robert in the path of a policeman named Davuth, who was an executioner and a torturer during Pol Pot's horrific regime, and who now seems to have some urgent business involving Robert, who fails to heed yet another warning (this from Sophal) because he's so "beautifully ignorant."
Karma, fate, and luck/chance are the foundation of this novel, and being in Cambodia thrusts young, unbelieving, logical-thinking Robert into a world where ghosts, spirits, omens and signs are as much part of the landscape as are the ruins at Angkor Wat. To further underscore that point, the author occasionally brings into our view things like bats taking off into the air as one huge colony, prayer flags moving in the wind, fear in a roll of thunder and trees that house spirits. And Although Pol Pot's genocidal regime had ended nearly twenty-five years earlier, the Cambodian setting allows the author to examine how this particular past still hasn't been forgotten in this country -- it continues to have an effect on people like Davuth, for example, who has been troubled by ghosts ever since he was a kamabhipal under Pol Pot. But most importantly, it is a place where people believe that
"karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one's little calculations irrelevant."
This one statement says so very much about what is happening in this book, but I will leave it to others to discover exactly how. I could so easily go on and talk about other things, for example, the "devastating spectacle" of the dominance of "Western ideas and moods" in Cambodia and the horrific impact they had on Cambodia's future, but I really think I've said enough at this juncture.
Getting into the story does take some time, but my advice is to relax. There is a great payoff awaiting patient readers -- not so much in terms of plot, but moreso it's all about what's happening around the action in this novel. I suppose you could read it just for plot but that would be such a waste -- this is an incredibly beautiful, haunting book, and now I am eager to hunt down others by this author. My advice -- as soon as it comes out in the US in January, get yourself a copy. It will be one of the best buys you've ever made.
I was recently given a copy of the American release of this book by the publisher, and after picking it up and starting to read, it dawned on me that oopsie, I had already bought a copy from the UK.
So here's the info on the American release of this novel, which is actually quite good, extremely well written, and one I'm highly recommending:
Hogarth, 2016 (January)
9780553447347
I have to laugh at the difference in blurbs for this novel between the American release and the British release. The UK blurb calls it a "taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith..." and the US blurb says that book is "Filled with Hitchcockian twists and turns." Neither blurb is quite accurate, and I had originally thought that Hunters in the Dark was a crime novel but that isn't exactly correct either. In fact, it's rather a difficult book to pigeonhole, but as it turns out, it is one I happened to like very much.
The main character in this novel is Robert Grieve, a young (not quite 30) British schoolteacher from a small village who realizes that his life is pretty much a dead end. In a bit of despair he travels to Thailand, wondering if he'll actually ever go back. While he has some sporadic contact with his parents (in whose eyes he doesn't measure up), he is contented with being alone, drifting along with the flow. The opening of this book finds him in a casino in Cambodia, where he parlays his leftover savings into a couple of thousand in winnings. Winning such a large amount of cash is just the first, but very important link in a chain of complex events that befall him and others on his periphery, beginning with an introduction to American expat Simon Beaucamp. Robert's driver Ouksa warns him against Simon, saying that he has a bad feeling about the guy, but Robert fails to heed his advice and winds up in a bit of trouble. I won't go any further than that re his time with the American, because it is the beginning of everything that's going to happen next and some things are just better left unsaid. Eventually though, Robert ends up in the capital of Phnom Penh, where he decides he should give English lessons to make money, and meets the beautiful Sophal, whose wealthy, upper-class father hires him to be her tutor. A stroke of fate (or perhaps more appropriately given the theme of this novel, karma) puts Robert in the path of a policeman named Davuth, who was an executioner and a torturer during Pol Pot's horrific regime, and who now seems to have some urgent business involving Robert, who fails to heed yet another warning (this from Sophal) because he's so "beautifully ignorant."
Karma, fate, and luck/chance are the foundation of this novel, and being in Cambodia thrusts young, unbelieving, logical-thinking Robert into a world where ghosts, spirits, omens and signs are as much part of the landscape as are the ruins at Angkor Wat. To further underscore that point, the author occasionally brings into our view things like bats taking off into the air as one huge colony, prayer flags moving in the wind, fear in a roll of thunder and trees that house spirits. And Although Pol Pot's genocidal regime had ended nearly twenty-five years earlier, the Cambodian setting allows the author to examine how this particular past still hasn't been forgotten in this country -- it continues to have an effect on people like Davuth, for example, who has been troubled by ghosts ever since he was a kamabhipal under Pol Pot. But most importantly, it is a place where people believe that
"karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one's little calculations irrelevant."
This one statement says so very much about what is happening in this book, but I will leave it to others to discover exactly how. I could so easily go on and talk about other things, for example, the "devastating spectacle" of the dominance of "Western ideas and moods" in Cambodia and the horrific impact they had on Cambodia's future, but I really think I've said enough at this juncture.
Getting into the story does take some time, but my advice is to relax. There is a great payoff awaiting patient readers -- not so much in terms of plot, but moreso it's all about what's happening around the action in this novel. I suppose you could read it just for plot but that would be such a waste -- this is an incredibly beautiful, haunting book, and now I am eager to hunt down others by this author. My advice -- as soon as it comes out in the US in January, get yourself a copy. It will be one of the best buys you've ever made.
February 17, 2016
I expected to read a book not a treatise on how many words to choose to describe clouds, huge rains, color of flowers, the crease in a pair of pants. Painfully slow to develop the story such as it is, was. In a phrase, tedious and boring. I gave up after 100,or so, pages.
Jim
Jim
February 17, 2024
Comparisons have been made to Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Paul Bowles. Add to that a dash of Patricia Highsmith. Osborne's book presents an updated "innocent abroad" in a land with a bloody history and ambiguous present. The Cambodian setting actually slowed my reading, since realizing how little I knew about the country, its amazing temples, its history as a protectorate of France, I kept looking up places referenced throughout the novel. My memories of the Pol Pot regime are still fresh, with no awareness of how the country has evolved over the ensuing decades. The Khmer people are gentle, if opportunistic. As one character notes, love in a culture is a prevalent river, lovelessness, a temporary dam that cannot last. The landscape is key here, along with the rainy weather. Most particularly, the Mekong River, the mosquito infested jungles, the humidity.
A windfall from casino winnings which carries with it exceptionally bad karma is the Mcguffin that sets the plot in motion. Robert, a restless British schoolteacher, makes choices that result in his being alone, unencumbered by a past, an identity, and luggage. What follows makes for an exciting read. I recently read another book about a traveller losing a backpack through thievery, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida. That book was was also a search for identity, if more metaphysical. The writing here is beautiful, evocative, menacing. Osborne has a talent for metaphor ("His youth was a wingless dodo") as well as the unexpected, witty adjective ("her suspicious tattoos"). A better than average thriller with well fleshed-out characters that have intriguing backstories, full inner lives. If the element of coincidence is sometimes a bit unbelievable, the reader is constantly reminded that the area is small, the gossip channels rapid.
A windfall from casino winnings which carries with it exceptionally bad karma is the Mcguffin that sets the plot in motion. Robert, a restless British schoolteacher, makes choices that result in his being alone, unencumbered by a past, an identity, and luggage. What follows makes for an exciting read. I recently read another book about a traveller losing a backpack through thievery, The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida. That book was was also a search for identity, if more metaphysical. The writing here is beautiful, evocative, menacing. Osborne has a talent for metaphor ("His youth was a wingless dodo") as well as the unexpected, witty adjective ("her suspicious tattoos"). A better than average thriller with well fleshed-out characters that have intriguing backstories, full inner lives. If the element of coincidence is sometimes a bit unbelievable, the reader is constantly reminded that the area is small, the gossip channels rapid.
February 27, 2016
This is quite an engrossing tale which takes place in the exotic world of Cambodia. A young English teacher, bored with his complacent life, decides to disappear. During his first night in Cambodia, he tries his hand at a gambling casino. What happens there sets off a series of events in which greed, karma and superstition play a huge part.
This author has crafted a gripping, suspenseful plot. I’ve recently been very disappointed in how inept publishers’ blurbs have become. Far too often, their comparisons of one author to another is completely unfathomable. When I saw this book compared to works of Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock, I feared that I would again be disappointed. But I do think the comparison to Highsmith and Hitchcock are right on target, although I’m not sure I see the connection to du Maurier. This author knows how to structure a very neat plot and how to create a haunting, chilling atmosphere. I cared for this naïve young Englishman and wanted to shake him many times as he innocently walks from one danger into the next. I noticed that some reviewers are saying that the book starts out too slowly, but I think the author did a great job of slowly building up the tempo of the work. If it does start out slowly for you, stick with it and I think you’ll appreciate as the story progresses just how fine a plot this author has produced. I’ll be looking into more work by Mr. Osborne.
Very entertaining literary thriller.
This book was given to me by the publisher through Blogging for Books.
This author has crafted a gripping, suspenseful plot. I’ve recently been very disappointed in how inept publishers’ blurbs have become. Far too often, their comparisons of one author to another is completely unfathomable. When I saw this book compared to works of Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock, I feared that I would again be disappointed. But I do think the comparison to Highsmith and Hitchcock are right on target, although I’m not sure I see the connection to du Maurier. This author knows how to structure a very neat plot and how to create a haunting, chilling atmosphere. I cared for this naïve young Englishman and wanted to shake him many times as he innocently walks from one danger into the next. I noticed that some reviewers are saying that the book starts out too slowly, but I think the author did a great job of slowly building up the tempo of the work. If it does start out slowly for you, stick with it and I think you’ll appreciate as the story progresses just how fine a plot this author has produced. I’ll be looking into more work by Mr. Osborne.
Very entertaining literary thriller.
This book was given to me by the publisher through Blogging for Books.
November 15, 2025
Said to be a modern day Graham Green, I picked this up in a used book store and was really impressed with it. Osborne is a really good writer and didn't take me long to get completely immersed in this story of an English teacher whose stay in Phnom Penh takes a dangerous twist after winning a few thousand bucks in a casino playing roulette. We travel to places in Cambodia where, as an naive Englishman abroad, you do need eyes in the back of your head; just who to trust? It was sinister and suspenseful in places, but also evokes beautifully, with a dream like prose, the early days of the relationship between our protagonist, Robert, who sort of lost his sense of direction in life, and Sophal, the daughter of a wealthy doctor. Cambodia is rendered ever so well; the rains (by god when it rains it rains!), the sticky heat, the mist the dirt the dust, the distant conical mountains, the shrines and temple ruins, and, even now all these years on, you can feel the lingering horrors and ghosts of Pol Pot's rule. I was not a fan of Osborne's The Ballad of a Small Player; I found this to be much better; and despite the fact there are a few niggles here and there in terms of the plot here, he is definitely a writer I will be sure to return to again.
August 28, 2015
My 7th book in my 2nd Mr B's Reading Year
Ok, let's start with the positives. This is a very readable book, with enough interest and intrigue to want to keep me reading to the end. The principle character, Robert Grieve, is good and had enough flaws, to make spending time with him something I wanted to do. Whilst the descriptions of the landscape and people, particularly of Cambodia, ran true and made me want to visit, even if the Mosquitos didn't.
So why only 3 stars? Simply put, I think he wrote the wrong book. The plot he choose of "jinxed" money was contrived and seemed forced. Characters seemed bent to the will of the plot, rather than being given rain to act normally. Any unnatural behaviour was put down to fate. Also, I found it strange that the character who commits the greatest crime, receives little "punishment" either because he commits the act in another's name or because he holds the money for so little time.
I wish the author had stayed with Robert and properly unravelled the consequences of his double identities. I think this would have been a better and more gripping story. It was almost like he lost faith in his own character or more likely, had an idea he just couldn't let go of.
I will look out for other books by the author but hope next time he believes in his protagonist as much as I did.
Ok, let's start with the positives. This is a very readable book, with enough interest and intrigue to want to keep me reading to the end. The principle character, Robert Grieve, is good and had enough flaws, to make spending time with him something I wanted to do. Whilst the descriptions of the landscape and people, particularly of Cambodia, ran true and made me want to visit, even if the Mosquitos didn't.
So why only 3 stars? Simply put, I think he wrote the wrong book. The plot he choose of "jinxed" money was contrived and seemed forced. Characters seemed bent to the will of the plot, rather than being given rain to act normally. Any unnatural behaviour was put down to fate. Also, I found it strange that the character who commits the greatest crime, receives little "punishment" either because he commits the act in another's name or because he holds the money for so little time.
I wish the author had stayed with Robert and properly unravelled the consequences of his double identities. I think this would have been a better and more gripping story. It was almost like he lost faith in his own character or more likely, had an idea he just couldn't let go of.
I will look out for other books by the author but hope next time he believes in his protagonist as much as I did.
March 28, 2024
- " Non abbiamo trovato niente" avrebbe detto Davuth e la vita, ancora una volta, sarebbe andata avanti nel nulla, verso la sua destinazione misteriosa e nichilista. -
Cinismo, immoralità, corruzione, opportunità e ricerca spasmodica di profitto.
Il cacciatore nel buio possiede in quantità differenti tutti gli ingredienti di un cocktail che lo spinge ad agire.
E l'innesco è quasi sempre un evento fortunoso e banale, un fatto che di per sé è innocuo ma che porta a un epilogo tragico.
Ma per fortuna...
" Le generazioni cambiano e l'amore ritorna dentro un popolo, persino dentro un popolo stuprato."
Cinismo, immoralità, corruzione, opportunità e ricerca spasmodica di profitto.
Il cacciatore nel buio possiede in quantità differenti tutti gli ingredienti di un cocktail che lo spinge ad agire.
E l'innesco è quasi sempre un evento fortunoso e banale, un fatto che di per sé è innocuo ma che porta a un epilogo tragico.
Ma per fortuna...
" Le generazioni cambiano e l'amore ritorna dentro un popolo, persino dentro un popolo stuprato."
January 21, 2016
i love lawrence osborne books so this could be biased. but his style is old fashioned like Of Human Bondage but also current and in context, and looks at western people and western actions interacting with 'other', with eastern people and eastern re-actions, and in this case, cambodians' take on history, morals, life outlook interacting with western visitors.
a sort of mr ripley meets mary settle in a cave some where between istanbul and tokyo Blood Tie The Talented Mr. Ripley
a sort of mr ripley meets mary settle in a cave some where between istanbul and tokyo Blood Tie The Talented Mr. Ripley
February 17, 2024
amazing book. beautifully written. talented writer.
January 30, 2016
One keeps hoping to find that new novelist who will retrieve the past glories of the word, the story, the characters, the theme. Lawrence Osborne does just that. With his The Forgiven he crushed into my world with his dark and involving synthesis of Evil and Morocco. You would think he could sit by and think, “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.” For he took us into the far reaches of conscience and disparity.
Now, in Hunters in the Dark, he combines the wit of Patricia Highsmith with the knowing of Graham Greene to craft another wonder. Although the book takes place mostly in Cambodia, his scenes of England are magnificent. In fact, he is to nature writing as is Theroux to travel. His comments upon his scene are deliriously centered. Robert could be the Twenty-first century equivalent of James’ Daisy Miller, the innocent yet somehow knowing American who enters in a world in which we navigate and aphasic intrigue and corruption.
And his characters are rounded. In fact his main character Robert is so rounded that he becomes another character, almost a double, but not in a Dr. Jeckll and Mr. Hyde but perhaps Dr. Jeckll and his close cousin. Equally polished as a character is Sar, a doctor who has survived the slaughters of Cambodia and seems to have come out none the damaged, but is he? What can he do with his rootless daughter? Osborne has crafted perfection in the character.
He writes very knowingly about the world of Khmer. He knows the ex-pats who are a bit like Mike Campbell and his home grown Lady Brett, Sophal, a wealthy and well-travelled twenty-five year old Cambodian. But he also meets the sinister Davuth, a policeman who cut his teeth on year zero of Pol Pot’s execution of the state. Although Osborne plays down the atrocities of our recent past, they are never far away. In fact, all we have to do at any point is just to turn left to enter the Genocide Museum.
In the end, we are as he emphasizes hunters in the dark. We do not know the prey. We do not know the dangers. We forge blithely enter the jungles of malevolence and iniquity. Bravo Lawrence Osborne.
Now, in Hunters in the Dark, he combines the wit of Patricia Highsmith with the knowing of Graham Greene to craft another wonder. Although the book takes place mostly in Cambodia, his scenes of England are magnificent. In fact, he is to nature writing as is Theroux to travel. His comments upon his scene are deliriously centered. Robert could be the Twenty-first century equivalent of James’ Daisy Miller, the innocent yet somehow knowing American who enters in a world in which we navigate and aphasic intrigue and corruption.
And his characters are rounded. In fact his main character Robert is so rounded that he becomes another character, almost a double, but not in a Dr. Jeckll and Mr. Hyde but perhaps Dr. Jeckll and his close cousin. Equally polished as a character is Sar, a doctor who has survived the slaughters of Cambodia and seems to have come out none the damaged, but is he? What can he do with his rootless daughter? Osborne has crafted perfection in the character.
He writes very knowingly about the world of Khmer. He knows the ex-pats who are a bit like Mike Campbell and his home grown Lady Brett, Sophal, a wealthy and well-travelled twenty-five year old Cambodian. But he also meets the sinister Davuth, a policeman who cut his teeth on year zero of Pol Pot’s execution of the state. Although Osborne plays down the atrocities of our recent past, they are never far away. In fact, all we have to do at any point is just to turn left to enter the Genocide Museum.
In the end, we are as he emphasizes hunters in the dark. We do not know the prey. We do not know the dangers. We forge blithely enter the jungles of malevolence and iniquity. Bravo Lawrence Osborne.
December 18, 2020
A completely numb English teacher decides to runaway from his humdrum life in Cambodia. He proceeds to serenely glide through life as mayhem quietly reels in his wake. Clever, stylish but empty.
September 12, 2022
Libro che avevo preso apposta per tenermi compagnia durante il mio viaggio in Indonesia, e così ha fatto (benché si svolga questo in Cambogia).
Più che la trama da thriller in sè, secondo me i punti forti del romanzo sono le atmosfere che esso trasmette e descrive. Sembra di sentirli sulla propria pelle, i tropici.
Scorrevole, si lascia leggere piacevolmente e permette anche di approfondire un po’ della propria cultura geografica e storica (specialmente per quanto riguarda i khmer rossi).
Un po’ come farsi un viaggio da quelle parti, in conclusione.
Più che la trama da thriller in sè, secondo me i punti forti del romanzo sono le atmosfere che esso trasmette e descrive. Sembra di sentirli sulla propria pelle, i tropici.
Scorrevole, si lascia leggere piacevolmente e permette anche di approfondire un po’ della propria cultura geografica e storica (specialmente per quanto riguarda i khmer rossi).
Un po’ come farsi un viaggio da quelle parti, in conclusione.
October 12, 2015
This is a dark novel, like the thunder-less rain clouds that appear overhead throughout the telling. Truly, what goes around comes around, and certainly that has rarely been so forcefully displayed than in this story of the intertwined lives of naïve tourists and Khmer locals.
Osborne has a strong, individualistic voice. A storyteller of depth and discernment, he takes only one paragraph over two pages to give us the reason for Pol Pot's existence and reasoning, then later explains the unique insanity of human evil. We westerners should be consumed by guilt - especially those of us who want to change an ethnic people into what we may deem a better life-style, a better philosophy or even religion, and thusly condemn ourselves to centuries of penance for this stupidity. We never seem to learn. Homo sapiens is not very sapient at all.
This is a grand book, with both likeable and unlikeable characters. Yes, a somewhat disturbing book, and one that may haunt me long after I've closed the covers.
Osborne has a strong, individualistic voice. A storyteller of depth and discernment, he takes only one paragraph over two pages to give us the reason for Pol Pot's existence and reasoning, then later explains the unique insanity of human evil. We westerners should be consumed by guilt - especially those of us who want to change an ethnic people into what we may deem a better life-style, a better philosophy or even religion, and thusly condemn ourselves to centuries of penance for this stupidity. We never seem to learn. Homo sapiens is not very sapient at all.
This is a grand book, with both likeable and unlikeable characters. Yes, a somewhat disturbing book, and one that may haunt me long after I've closed the covers.
January 12, 2016
For this to only be 320 pages, it was a VERY long book. The majority of it was spent talking about the food, the sites, the traditions and the people. For those of you who are into that type of thing, the author took a lot of time to tell about it. He did a great job and made you feel like you were there. I really learned a lot. I even got to use the word "baht" on Words with Friends last night. HA!
The true action of the story, however, could have been told in about ten pages. There were certainly several twists with the outcome being pretty ironic. But, then you would miss all the other stuff.
If your looking to learn about another country, it's food, people, traditions, etc. with a little mystery thrown in, this is the book for you. However, if your looking for action and adventure on every page, you will certainly be bored and need to look further.
Thanks to Crown/Random House for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The true action of the story, however, could have been told in about ten pages. There were certainly several twists with the outcome being pretty ironic. But, then you would miss all the other stuff.
If your looking to learn about another country, it's food, people, traditions, etc. with a little mystery thrown in, this is the book for you. However, if your looking for action and adventure on every page, you will certainly be bored and need to look further.
Thanks to Crown/Random House for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 20, 2015
There's a point in this story where the author refers to some dancers as "footsure and elegant and distant" and this seems to me to be a great description of the writing style. The author writes confidently and expertly. There are some lovely turns of phrase and descriptions. And the distance isn't because of lack of involvement with the characters, but more of their personalities and approach to life. I really enjoyed reading this: it is not really a happy story and the people aren't all that pleasant, but it is expertly told and draws you in. And there's an elegance to the tale that feels very satisfying at the end.
March 9, 2016
Grateful to have discovered this extraordinary writer... reminds me a bit of Graham Greene, but of course he charts his own course -- in this case, in Cambodia. This is a terrific read and I've ordered two more of Osborne's novels. Have to catch up.
April 27, 2016
A Throwback
Half my college contemporaries must have toyed with writing such a novel. As students, we would go abroad for a few months, somewhere like the fringes of Europe, North Africa, India, or Southeast Asia. Shunning the tourist hotels, we would find somewhere to live cheap, mingle with the locals, and make notes for a novel that would show things as they really were. Most of these books never got written, of course, and those writers like Paul Bowles or Paul Theroux who actually made a success of the genre are a lot wiser and more talented than any of us. Lawrence Osborne wandered into Bowles territory with The Forgiven , an effective novel about a clash between wealthy tourists and Mahgreb tribesmen in North Africa. But now in Theroux country, more or less, he reverts to the theme in its simplest form: a young Englishman, on his long vacation as a schoolteacher, takes a cheap flight to Asia, and goes off the map. It felt like a throwback, being read in a time-warp.
Robert Grieve, a bored English schoolteacher of 28, takes a bus from Bangkok to the Cambodian border, and crosses on foot. Almost immediately, two things happen to him, one fortunate, the other not: he wins a fair amount of money at a casino, and he meets up with a charming American expat who relieves him of his money and his passport. Or you could put it the other way around: winning the money sets Robert up as a mark, and the American does him the favor of nudging him into what he half-wanted to do all along, lose himself in another identity. Easy enough to do; Phnom Penh hotels are lax in the matter of demanding Identification, and Robert lucks into the job of teaching English to a young Khmer woman of almost his own age whose rich father wants her to have a European escort.
All of which is very fine and full of local color clearly observed at first hand (Osborne now lives in Bangkok), but it is also very slow. We are almost halfway through the novel before anything much happens, or we even understand the meaning of the title. It is a Japanese phrase, apparently, for people rattling around looking for something they do not even know. In the second half of the book, fortunately, things do get moving, involving Robert, the American who cheated him, the Khmer lovers of each of them, and a corrupt policeman. If you could start reading at page 130, with the book's second part, it might be quite an exciting novel. And a more meaningful one too, as it becomes clear that Robert is not the only hunter in the dark, and that almost everyone in the story is trying to find some meaning in their lives. The last half had the makings of a four-star book, even five. But there is an awful lot of that what-I-did-on-my-long-vacation stuff to get through first.
Half my college contemporaries must have toyed with writing such a novel. As students, we would go abroad for a few months, somewhere like the fringes of Europe, North Africa, India, or Southeast Asia. Shunning the tourist hotels, we would find somewhere to live cheap, mingle with the locals, and make notes for a novel that would show things as they really were. Most of these books never got written, of course, and those writers like Paul Bowles or Paul Theroux who actually made a success of the genre are a lot wiser and more talented than any of us. Lawrence Osborne wandered into Bowles territory with The Forgiven , an effective novel about a clash between wealthy tourists and Mahgreb tribesmen in North Africa. But now in Theroux country, more or less, he reverts to the theme in its simplest form: a young Englishman, on his long vacation as a schoolteacher, takes a cheap flight to Asia, and goes off the map. It felt like a throwback, being read in a time-warp.
Robert Grieve, a bored English schoolteacher of 28, takes a bus from Bangkok to the Cambodian border, and crosses on foot. Almost immediately, two things happen to him, one fortunate, the other not: he wins a fair amount of money at a casino, and he meets up with a charming American expat who relieves him of his money and his passport. Or you could put it the other way around: winning the money sets Robert up as a mark, and the American does him the favor of nudging him into what he half-wanted to do all along, lose himself in another identity. Easy enough to do; Phnom Penh hotels are lax in the matter of demanding Identification, and Robert lucks into the job of teaching English to a young Khmer woman of almost his own age whose rich father wants her to have a European escort.
All of which is very fine and full of local color clearly observed at first hand (Osborne now lives in Bangkok), but it is also very slow. We are almost halfway through the novel before anything much happens, or we even understand the meaning of the title. It is a Japanese phrase, apparently, for people rattling around looking for something they do not even know. In the second half of the book, fortunately, things do get moving, involving Robert, the American who cheated him, the Khmer lovers of each of them, and a corrupt policeman. If you could start reading at page 130, with the book's second part, it might be quite an exciting novel. And a more meaningful one too, as it becomes clear that Robert is not the only hunter in the dark, and that almost everyone in the story is trying to find some meaning in their lives. The last half had the makings of a four-star book, even five. But there is an awful lot of that what-I-did-on-my-long-vacation stuff to get through first.
April 23, 2023
"One can feel a human heart from a great distance; the hunter feels his prey even in a great darkness."
A British drifter wandering Southeast Asia who is down to his last few dollars manages to win $2000 in a seedy border casino in Cambodia--a fortune to the locals. And people take notice--the wrong people. What should have been a windfall changes Robert Grieve’s life for the worse. And what transpires is a harrowing journey through a country that harbors a schizophrenic personality: one with the gentle, spiritual nature of Buddhism on one side and the gruesome memory of “Year 0” on the other, in which Cambodia’s genocide was unleashed by the Khmer Rouge in the ‘70s and a third of the country perished in its killing fields. Those who did the killing are still alive and well. I visited Cambodia in 2018 and our guide, a younger man who grew up on the streets of Phnom Penh, told us that if you see anyone over 50 in Cambodia, they were the ones who did the indiscriminate killing as teenagers. And there are plenty of them. A sobering thought indeed.
Hunters in the Dark is the perfect suspense novel IMO—one that works just fine as an international mystery but also has the depth of a literary novel. The writing is strong, and the author obviously knows his subject as we travel the exotic places that most tourists won’t ever see. But we also are witness to the damaged psyches of those—good and bad—who survived Year 0. It’s a compelling and dark novel with a satisfying twist at the end. I’m looking forward to more books by Lawrence Osborne.
A British drifter wandering Southeast Asia who is down to his last few dollars manages to win $2000 in a seedy border casino in Cambodia--a fortune to the locals. And people take notice--the wrong people. What should have been a windfall changes Robert Grieve’s life for the worse. And what transpires is a harrowing journey through a country that harbors a schizophrenic personality: one with the gentle, spiritual nature of Buddhism on one side and the gruesome memory of “Year 0” on the other, in which Cambodia’s genocide was unleashed by the Khmer Rouge in the ‘70s and a third of the country perished in its killing fields. Those who did the killing are still alive and well. I visited Cambodia in 2018 and our guide, a younger man who grew up on the streets of Phnom Penh, told us that if you see anyone over 50 in Cambodia, they were the ones who did the indiscriminate killing as teenagers. And there are plenty of them. A sobering thought indeed.
Hunters in the Dark is the perfect suspense novel IMO—one that works just fine as an international mystery but also has the depth of a literary novel. The writing is strong, and the author obviously knows his subject as we travel the exotic places that most tourists won’t ever see. But we also are witness to the damaged psyches of those—good and bad—who survived Year 0. It’s a compelling and dark novel with a satisfying twist at the end. I’m looking forward to more books by Lawrence Osborne.
September 30, 2016
Looking at the Bio of Lawrence Osborne its clear that the settings and feel of his novels are largely drawn from personal experience. He and his protagonists are outsiders navigating foreign countries and cultures. It gives his books a real authenticity, and I loved "Hunters in the Dark".
There are a number of plot twists, and the book races along. The twists themselves are not all unpredictable, but overall I didn't mind this because the writing was a great combination of action and reflection.
The comparisons with Graham Greene's writing are obvious (Greene gets a mention from Osborne)but that's not such a bad thing. "Hunters in the Dark" alternates between the musings of a naive Westerner(Robert), and the (mostly) duplicitous motivations of the native Cambodians. Its a fascinating study of the contrast between perceived truth, and reality.
I'm not sure that this enhances the reputation of Cambodia as a travellers destination, and I certainly would think twice about using local taxis and guides in future.
There are a number of plot twists, and the book races along. The twists themselves are not all unpredictable, but overall I didn't mind this because the writing was a great combination of action and reflection.
The comparisons with Graham Greene's writing are obvious (Greene gets a mention from Osborne)but that's not such a bad thing. "Hunters in the Dark" alternates between the musings of a naive Westerner(Robert), and the (mostly) duplicitous motivations of the native Cambodians. Its a fascinating study of the contrast between perceived truth, and reality.
I'm not sure that this enhances the reputation of Cambodia as a travellers destination, and I certainly would think twice about using local taxis and guides in future.
September 23, 2017
4.75 stars. Comments to follow. Of the past month's many books, this one has stayed with me. Travel the world without leaving home, indeed. Grabbed a copy of "Beautiful Animals"--can't wait to read it.
July 13, 2017
A very good read by one of my favourite writers. But I advise those just discovering Osbourne to start with "The Forgiven", a much stronger work.
January 11, 2019
Storia nel suo insieme poco convincente, si riscatta nel finale
August 24, 2017
This book is set in Cambodia and full of atmosphere; in fact, so full of atmosphere that sometimes it crowds out the plot and encroaches on the main characters. It would not be a problem per se, but too many adjectives related to a cloud or a sunset often distracts from the imminent action. Also if I would drink and eat ,and smoke so many different things as the characters do within 24 hours, I would probably not be able to write any reviews for very long time.
The plot is a bit far fetched - everyone is hunting everyone in the book. Sometimes even the author is “hunting” for a swiping generalisations and metaphors which do not totally make sense to me: “The Khmers did not have time to lecture themselves or others. They were young and wounded, but their wounds were so deep, that they could be ignored for a while.” ???
I did not like the main character, though I easily can imagine such a type. I guess, I try to say i did not like the author sympathising with him by making another character calling him “innocent”. The minor characters are more vivid and 3 dimensional though.
But I liked the social observations featured in the book, especially the axis of interaction between the locals and the expats and their mutual perceptions. For example, the main character, Robert is reflecting on a person he has met the first time: “Davuh, he felt, was much deeper than himself because he had lived the most dangerous life. The gift of dangerous life, swiftness of thought, a fine capacity for hatred. You did not meet that type in the developed countries anymore.” At that moment Robert does not know that the man is corrupted violent policemen and former teenage soldier in Khmer Rouge. This misplaced awe by the expats of the locals’ “authenticity” sounds very familiar to me based upon Russia’s 90s. On the other hand, a local, well-to-do, doctor reveals how he perceives the West: “You destroy people in order to make the idea live. Its a uniquely Western kind of behaviour”. Although i would disagree it is a uniquely Western behaviour, I understand why it seems like that to him.
It was my first book by Mr Osborne. It did not put me off. But equally I was not totally wowed by this book either.
It seems, his recent book “Beautiful animals” is better and I plan to read it at some stage.
The plot is a bit far fetched - everyone is hunting everyone in the book. Sometimes even the author is “hunting” for a swiping generalisations and metaphors which do not totally make sense to me: “The Khmers did not have time to lecture themselves or others. They were young and wounded, but their wounds were so deep, that they could be ignored for a while.” ???
I did not like the main character, though I easily can imagine such a type. I guess, I try to say i did not like the author sympathising with him by making another character calling him “innocent”. The minor characters are more vivid and 3 dimensional though.
But I liked the social observations featured in the book, especially the axis of interaction between the locals and the expats and their mutual perceptions. For example, the main character, Robert is reflecting on a person he has met the first time: “Davuh, he felt, was much deeper than himself because he had lived the most dangerous life. The gift of dangerous life, swiftness of thought, a fine capacity for hatred. You did not meet that type in the developed countries anymore.” At that moment Robert does not know that the man is corrupted violent policemen and former teenage soldier in Khmer Rouge. This misplaced awe by the expats of the locals’ “authenticity” sounds very familiar to me based upon Russia’s 90s. On the other hand, a local, well-to-do, doctor reveals how he perceives the West: “You destroy people in order to make the idea live. Its a uniquely Western kind of behaviour”. Although i would disagree it is a uniquely Western behaviour, I understand why it seems like that to him.
It was my first book by Mr Osborne. It did not put me off. But equally I was not totally wowed by this book either.
It seems, his recent book “Beautiful animals” is better and I plan to read it at some stage.
February 17, 2017
Hunters in the Dark
is my first Lawrence Osborne novel, though I’d often heard him compared to Graham Greene and Paul Bowles. Reading a little into Osborne’s background, I was struck by how rare it is to see a writer like him these days, one who lives as nomad moving from one locale to another, for whom traveling and writing are synonymous. Hunters in the Dark is a template of this. In the novel, the main character, twenty-something-year-old Robert Grieve, finds himself in Cambodia, running afoul and adrift in world that is both alluring and alien to him. This alone might be enough to turn off a lot of readers, myself included, but Osborne deftly avoids falling into the common pitfall of white-man-in-awe-of-exotic-East. There is a hint of that wide-eyed awe only because our main character is such a fish out of water, but Osborne quickly turns that tired trope on its head in startling new ways.
Hunters in the Dark evokes the kind of tension and contrasts we see in Henry James’s Daisy Miller: the old world butting heads with globalization and modernity; how innocence and wonder is strafed by cynicism and nihilism. Here, it is the Western world that is in decline: “They were middle-class and unemployed, or so it seemed, their education now of little value, and they seemed to be able to scrounge enough money to take leave of their senses for months on end. Once upon a time, the Khmers had been in awe of them. But now, their dirtiness and scruffiness and unruliness had dimmed their image at the very moment that the Chinese and Thais had come into considerable amounts of money. The barangs no longer seemed as formidable as their grandparents, even if their grandparents had been hippies in the sixties.”
Disillusioned with his life as a teacher back in England, Robert takes off to Southeast Asia, first spending time in Thailand, then crossing the border into Cambodia. He becomes swept up in the notion of starting a new life, of shedding his life of predetermined days, a ‘life measured out in coffee spoons’ so to speak. Robert is our naive, ingenuous Daisy Miller, who loses himself in a country of deep ancient history, but also a country that is just coming to terms with the trauma of the Pol Pot regime.
It is a visit to a casino where he spends the last of his savings and wins the princely sum of $2000 that changes everything. The money sets into motion a complex series of events, not unlike the beating wings of a butterfly setting off a hurricane.
Robert hires Ouksa, a Cambodian driver, who takes him around to various sights. He plays tourist long enough to meet Simon Beaucamp, a charismatic, smooth-talking American who takes Robert to visit his luxurious house overlooking the river, despite the protestations from Ouksa who senses something awry about Simon. Robert later makes it to Phnom Penh. This time without any of his belongings. Without his passport and no money, he wonders around in a stupor until he finds luck again when he is hired as an English tutor to the daughter of a wealthy Khmer family. In this role, he decides fate has given him an opportunity to reinvent himself. He takes the name of his American acquaintance, Simon.
What is remarkable about Hunters is how subtle the menace is throughout and how it colors and infuses the smallest gestures and actions. Osborne’s writing is precise, the details sharp and specific. When he describes something, you experience it exactly; the scene appears in your mind in sharp relief. And yet his writing also casts shadows, and double-edged meanings and symbols abound:
“When Ouksa had driven off, the two white men sat on the veranda with gin and tonics. The open rafters of the house seemed immense in the night shadows, the moths spinning around the wooden beams. It looked like a house which Simon had built himself since it was so much better looking than the houses he had seen up till then. Simon put on some music from the house above them. He took out his ornate Moroccan chessboard, with its pieces carved from argun wood and hand-painted, and they set it up on the coffee table between them. He said he had bought long ago in Essaouria on the Atlantic coast and it had a 'spirit' that helped his game. He laid out the piece and they flipped for black and white and Robert got black. He kicked off his sandals and the alcohol swelled within him and he absorbed the humid smell of datura coming in from the forest. The roneat music was faintly chiming out in the pitch-black fields, a wailing of fiddles as well. Simon made the first move and soon he was winning easily. He was the kind of player who had all his moves prepared in his head long before he touched a single pawn.”
Osborne’s writing is precise, but the tone is ambiguous and mysterious, portending something sinister or profound in ways that I found delightfully unsettling.
Hunters feels like an old school psychological thriller that would have felt right at home in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock. But it’s a thriller that pushes the boundaries of the genre with its obsession with the ideas of fate and chance. Fate and chance here are not just abstract themes but the very fulcrums that turn the plot.
In the end, the whirlwind of experiences changes Robert. His Western confidence in certainties is forever tainted: “Karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one’s little calculations irrelevant.” Ultimately, I think Osborne is giving us a critique of Western life and its modern ideas of individualism and linear thinking at the level of plot and narrative structure. But it isn’t just a simple contrast of East versus West. It is also a contrast of modes of thinking: rational European versus a Khmer one that puts equal weight on omens, signs, and spirits. It is a book about different belief systems colliding and crashing into each other with violent consequences.
[Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher for an honest and candid review. This review was originally written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.]
Hunters in the Dark evokes the kind of tension and contrasts we see in Henry James’s Daisy Miller: the old world butting heads with globalization and modernity; how innocence and wonder is strafed by cynicism and nihilism. Here, it is the Western world that is in decline: “They were middle-class and unemployed, or so it seemed, their education now of little value, and they seemed to be able to scrounge enough money to take leave of their senses for months on end. Once upon a time, the Khmers had been in awe of them. But now, their dirtiness and scruffiness and unruliness had dimmed their image at the very moment that the Chinese and Thais had come into considerable amounts of money. The barangs no longer seemed as formidable as their grandparents, even if their grandparents had been hippies in the sixties.”
Disillusioned with his life as a teacher back in England, Robert takes off to Southeast Asia, first spending time in Thailand, then crossing the border into Cambodia. He becomes swept up in the notion of starting a new life, of shedding his life of predetermined days, a ‘life measured out in coffee spoons’ so to speak. Robert is our naive, ingenuous Daisy Miller, who loses himself in a country of deep ancient history, but also a country that is just coming to terms with the trauma of the Pol Pot regime.
It is a visit to a casino where he spends the last of his savings and wins the princely sum of $2000 that changes everything. The money sets into motion a complex series of events, not unlike the beating wings of a butterfly setting off a hurricane.
Robert hires Ouksa, a Cambodian driver, who takes him around to various sights. He plays tourist long enough to meet Simon Beaucamp, a charismatic, smooth-talking American who takes Robert to visit his luxurious house overlooking the river, despite the protestations from Ouksa who senses something awry about Simon. Robert later makes it to Phnom Penh. This time without any of his belongings. Without his passport and no money, he wonders around in a stupor until he finds luck again when he is hired as an English tutor to the daughter of a wealthy Khmer family. In this role, he decides fate has given him an opportunity to reinvent himself. He takes the name of his American acquaintance, Simon.
What is remarkable about Hunters is how subtle the menace is throughout and how it colors and infuses the smallest gestures and actions. Osborne’s writing is precise, the details sharp and specific. When he describes something, you experience it exactly; the scene appears in your mind in sharp relief. And yet his writing also casts shadows, and double-edged meanings and symbols abound:
“When Ouksa had driven off, the two white men sat on the veranda with gin and tonics. The open rafters of the house seemed immense in the night shadows, the moths spinning around the wooden beams. It looked like a house which Simon had built himself since it was so much better looking than the houses he had seen up till then. Simon put on some music from the house above them. He took out his ornate Moroccan chessboard, with its pieces carved from argun wood and hand-painted, and they set it up on the coffee table between them. He said he had bought long ago in Essaouria on the Atlantic coast and it had a 'spirit' that helped his game. He laid out the piece and they flipped for black and white and Robert got black. He kicked off his sandals and the alcohol swelled within him and he absorbed the humid smell of datura coming in from the forest. The roneat music was faintly chiming out in the pitch-black fields, a wailing of fiddles as well. Simon made the first move and soon he was winning easily. He was the kind of player who had all his moves prepared in his head long before he touched a single pawn.”
Osborne’s writing is precise, but the tone is ambiguous and mysterious, portending something sinister or profound in ways that I found delightfully unsettling.
Hunters feels like an old school psychological thriller that would have felt right at home in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock. But it’s a thriller that pushes the boundaries of the genre with its obsession with the ideas of fate and chance. Fate and chance here are not just abstract themes but the very fulcrums that turn the plot.
In the end, the whirlwind of experiences changes Robert. His Western confidence in certainties is forever tainted: “Karma swirled around all things, lending them destinies over which mere desire had no control. It made one’s little calculations irrelevant.” Ultimately, I think Osborne is giving us a critique of Western life and its modern ideas of individualism and linear thinking at the level of plot and narrative structure. But it isn’t just a simple contrast of East versus West. It is also a contrast of modes of thinking: rational European versus a Khmer one that puts equal weight on omens, signs, and spirits. It is a book about different belief systems colliding and crashing into each other with violent consequences.
[Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher for an honest and candid review. This review was originally written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.]
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