thegreglowe.com

By GREG LOWE IN BANGKOK THE Supreme Court’s landmark ruling to seize 46.37 billion baht (S$1.97 billion) in assets belonging to the family of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is unlikely to have a significant impact on the Stock Exchange of Thailand index or investor sentiment in general, analysts say. Two grenade attacks on Bangkok […]

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Asia’s ability to compete on a global scale will remain severely hampered until the Northern Hemisphere’s better off nations loosen their economic grip by removing barriers to trade. Access to markets in the West is a vital lifeline for the development of Asian countries, not only on purely economic levels, but also in terms of […]

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Unlike most people, Jane Flemming, the protagonist of Scottish author Christopher Brookmyre’s novel All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses an Eye, can pinpoint the exact turn of events that transformed her life. A drunken, awkward, and most importantly unprotected bout of unsatisfying sex with her Catholic boyfriend Tom morphed the 19-year old blue-haired punk […]

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It is folly to talk of Asia as if it was a unified entity. It is home to more than half the world’s population and comprises some 53 countries. However, the continent today does suffer from a “certain commonality of problems”, according to Colin Mason author of A Short History of Asia. Underdevelopment, poverty, disease, […]

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It’s hard to deny Thailand’s intrinsic charm has made it one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations. The kingdom’s magnetism pulls in more than 10 million visitors each year, with white westerners, aka farangs, making up a third of this figure with an average of around 10,000 arriving each day. Along with the flow […]

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A disturbed teenager slaughtering rabbits and torturing wasps; A futuristic religious leader decapitating his nemesis, keeping the head alive as he uses it daily as a punch bag; A serial killer intent on murdering those who represent the excesses of Thatcher’s Britain. Just a few examples of the dark, warped, and often perversely funny themes […]

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South African author and playwright Athol Fugard’s recently-published novel Tsotsi, is a compelling and brutal tale that follows the life of the story’s eponymous protagonist. Set in Sophiatown — a black township in Johannesburg that was razed in the 1950s to make way for homes for the whites — Fugard uses the oppression of the […]

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If there’s one quality that defines Shirley Hazzard’s People in Glass Houses, it’s subtlety. This collection of eight short stories is a masterpiece of observation which clearly demonstrates the author’s perceptive wit. Set in the 1950s, amidst the corridors and offices of the newly-created monolithic and meandering bureaucracy of “the Organization”– read the United Nations […]

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It’s Friday afternoon, and after a particularly busy week, with only a few things to wrap up, I try and scratch off the last important thing on my list of things to do – interview author/journalist Tom Hodgkinson. First I try his London office a number of times, only to get the following answer-phone message: […]

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Kay Danes’ Nightmare in Laos: The True Story of a Woman Imprisoned in a Communist Gulag is her harrowing personal account of being locked up for a crime she didn’t commit, in a country where human rights are pure fiction. Danes and her husband Kerry, a former Australian SAS officer, established Lao Securicor Company in […]

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