William L. Gibson has just published Alfred Raquez and the French Experience of the Far East, 1898-1906, as part of the series, Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia.
In 1890, a man calling himself Alfred Raquez appeared in Indochina claiming to be a writer travelling the world to escape unfathomable sorrows back home in France. He published thousands of pages of highly detailed travel accounts that open a unique window onto the European presence in the Far East. And yet, despite the charm and the ebullience and the erudition, through all his travels and rising fame, the man kept a secret that was so mortifying that even his closest companions would not learn of it until after his death in 1907. In truth, Alfred Raquez did not exist...
Alfred Raquez and the French Experience of the Far East, 1898-1906 provides a fascinating read for students and scholars of colonial Southeast Asia, and European colonialism more broadly.
William L. Gibson and his co-editor Paul Bruthiaux have previously published In the Land of Pagodas and Laotian Pages, both translations of Raquez's travels through Asia at the turn of the century, and both published by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press.
William's articles have appeared the Mekong Review, the Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient, and BiblioAsia, amongst others.
William's trilogy of hard-boiled crime novels set in 1890s Singapore is published by Monsoon Books.