thegreglowe.com

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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In Thailand’s seaside town of Hua Hin, there are several great places to visit if you don’t want to sit on the beach all day. Greg Lowe gives a tour of Hua Hin’s other attractions. With a legacy dating back to the reign of King Rama III, Hua Hin started off as a seaside village […]

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To say that disgraced politician cum author, Lord Jeffrey Archer, is a controversial character is an understatement. He has been imprisoned for perjury and perverting the court of justice; breached parole conditions; stolen coats in Canada; been accused of insider trading and ripping off charities; and was implicated in Simon Mann’s planned coup in Equatorial […]

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Pattaya is notorious as a sleaze and sand sort of place, but the city is starting to move upmarket and there are several interesting sights around the city. Greg Lowe goes in search of the other side of Pattaya. ‘Cultural’ and ‘Pattaya’ are words not normally used in the same sentence. The latter more often […]

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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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U-THANT’S GRANDSON SPEAKS: The family’s ardent love for Burma lives on Despite being born in New York in the 1960s, Thant Myint-U’s memories are of a childhood steeped inBurmese culture. Life in his maternal grandfather U-Thant’s house in Riverdale, just outside of Manhattan, was a stark contrast to the icy, snowy winters and bright lights […]

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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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Fan Wu’s debut novel February Flowers is a deeply compelling coming of age story, centred around two female university students in Guangzhou, China. Narrated by protagonist Chen Ming, which means “Morning Bright”, readers are introduced to a nation and a people in flux. China in 1991 was caught up in the tensions and conflicts between […]

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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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