When his girlfriend takes a job in northern Thailand, Mischa goes along for the ride, finding work as a freelance reporter for an English-language newspaper. One drunken evening a fellow expat tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist serving a life sentence for murder, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead in her prison cell - she has committed suicide. What begins as mild curiosity in the case rapidly becomes an obsession, as Mischa seeks to reconstruct the details of Martiya's life - and death.
His search draws him deep into her world. He interviews her colleagues, seeks out the family of her victim, and eventually travels into the Thai hills, into the world of the remote Dyalo tribe who Martiya studied and lived among. What he uncovers is a tragic love story - of a woman who fell in love with the field and then, much later and with fatal consequences, fell in love with one of her subjects.
- ISBN10 1843547643
- ISBN13 9781843547648
- Publish Date 1 August 2008 (first published 6 February 2007)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 28 February 2014
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Atlantic Books
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320
- Language English