Samarang Hotel

Julian Lockhardt, the bombastic, heavy-drinking expat manager of the Samarang Hotel – the most prestigious hotel in Vientiane, Laos, and a gathering place for diplomats and spies – is short on self-awareness, long on self-pity. Society, so he believes, has failed him. He is easily seduced by Asia's many charms, deeply resistant to any broader understanding of its underlying values and confident – smugly so – of the supremacy of Western ‘enlightenment' thinking. Julian's least favourite guest, a