The Beach is still a bestselling novel 10 years after it was first published, with the blockbuster movie immortalising Thailand’s Koh Phi Phi islands and the book becoming a backpacker classic. Here’s a blast from the past with an interview with Alex Garland just before The Beach went supernova and just after his second novel The Tesseract was published
As well as Travelhappy and Divehappy, I also edit SpikeMagazine.com, which has been online in one form or another for over a decade and so makes me feel very old. The site consists of book reviews, interviews and features about authors, artists and musicians. Recently I gave Spike a makeover and discovered several articles on there that might be of interest to Travelhappy readers.
There’s the aforementioned Alex Garland interview by Nancy Rawlinson, which provides a great snapshot of how popular The Beach was as a book before the movie came out and made it go stratospheric (check Travelfish’s guidebook to
Koh Phi Phi if you want the practicalities of visiting there today;
There’s also Jayne Margett’s great feature on Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour, where he pushes Nietzsche’s maxim of “Whatever does not kill makes me stronger” to the limit with various extreme cuisines around the world;
My interview with Canadian expat and resident Bangkok author Christopher G. Moore on his novel Gambling On Magic and his 20 years living in Thailand’s capital;
and also my pretty withering review of Lonely Planet Unpacked, the first LP short story collection about travel disasters;
Finally, Nick Clapson’s article on the writing of Bruce Chatwin is a great overview of this enigmatic travel writer’s work
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