King Cobra imparts all the tremendous excitement of coming upon a hidden treasure in the jungles of Indochina. Once I began to surrender to Hervey’s spell, I started—as, perhaps, he did—to lose all sense of where fact ended and fiction began.
King Cobra : Mekong Adventures in French Indochina
Summary:
- Author (s):
- Harry Hervey (Author),
Kent Davis (Editor),
Pico Iyer (Foreword) - Release:
- 2013
- Category:
- Books
- Order a Copy:
- From Amazon →
Harry Hervey’s rare account takes us on a quest for a lost Khmer temple in 1925 French Indochina. Three stories march side-by-side to the measure of his cadenced prose: the impact of French colonialism on the Far East; the tale of the glorious Khmer civilization; and the sensual, barbaric lives of the region’s people in another era.
Renowned travel writer Pico Iyer opens with a provocative foreword, then we join Hervey on his trek, now lavishly illustrated with 140 vintage Indochina images by the author and from historian Joel Montague.
This expanded edition features an extensive author profile: Harry Hervey: The Charmer Behind the Cobra, by biographer Harlan Greene; a bibliography; anthropologist Margaret Mead’s 1928 review; and Hervey’s gruesome essay inspired by his Indochina voyage, The Lover of Madame Guillotine.
Hervey sees the jungle one moment as a vindictive monster, the next as an annihilating river beneath which a whole civilization drowns.
A gripping biography of that tawny courtesan Indochina—from her early amour with a race from India, to her present liaison with France….
Other Releases
King Cobra: an Autobiography of Travel in French Indo-China
The Cosmopolitan Book Co. (New York) • 1927
Travels in French Indo-China
Thornton Butterworth (London) • 1928
Resources
The Lure of Hidden Treasure (forward by Pico Iyer)
Inside the the Régie d’Opium (An excerpt)
Readers’ reviews on Amazon (Reviews)
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Book cover images: Front, Back (JPG)