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The singular lives of artists whose identities are forged by the exotic.

About the Author

Jamie James is the author of The Music of the Spheres, The Snake Charmer, Rimbaud in Java, and other titles. He has contributed to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, and National Geographic Traveler, among others, and served as the art critic at The New Yorker and The Times of London. He moved to Indonesia in 1999.

Reviews

Esoterically learned and always entertaining . . . [Jamie James] may be a blue-chip professional writer (and one with a subtle sense of language and a very good idea of where his reader is), but there's no question that his new book is the work of an amateur in the strictest, most laudable sense: the one who acts, in this case writes, out of love . . . Quite a few readers will, I'm sure, pick up James's book to nourish dreams of escaping the malfunctioning contraption of the homeland. --Joseph O'Neill, The New York Times Book Review "[An] entertaining, erudite study of a rarefied group of people whose experience of other cultures transcended mere travel." --Tash Aw, Financial Times [A] richly detailed, absorbing cultural history . . . Abundant primary sources inform James' sharply drawn, sympathetic portraits. --Kirkus (starred review) James is merrily entertaining in his exceptional erudition and nimble eloquence, and fluently and movingly insightful in his psychological, sexual, social, and aesthetic interpretations as he tells these astonishing, often tragic tales of intrepid self-creation and ardently chosen homelands.--Booklist (starred review) "A riveting account of some mightily 'other' lives--people of learning longing to be elsewhere, body or soul, and picturesquely succeeding: just as Jamie James does in his calling as their chronicler and kindred spirit." --Gini Alhadeff, author of Diary of a Djinn