Saint Jack

Award-winning writer Paul Theroux explores the darker underside of the community of expatriates in South-East Asia in his compelling and strikingly honest novel Saint Jack . Jack Flowers, saint or sinner, caught a passing bumboat into Singapore and got a job as a water-clerk to a Chinese ship chandler. Now, on the side, he offers girls (indeed ''anything, anything at all'') to tourists, sailors, residents and expatriates, but he is haunted by his lack of worldly success and his fifty-three years weight heavily on him. So when he agrees to act as blackmailer for the faintly sinister American Edwin Shuck in a plot against a general from Vietnam, he has high, not to mention wild, hopes of triumph. These are the outrageous confessions of an ingenious conman in the seedy and unforgettable world of expatriates amidst imperial ruins. ''A witty, subtle, often moving self-portrait of a memorable rogue'' Observer ''Theroux''s prose it rich, his perceptions so many-layered, he involves us in a world that extends well beyond the physical limits of his novel'' The Times American travel writer Paul Theroux is known for the rich descriptions of people and places that is often streaked with his distinctive sense of irony; his novels and collected short stories, My Other Life , The Collected Stories , My Secret History , The Lower River , The Stranger at the Palazzo d''Oro , A Dead Hand , Millroy the Magician , The Elephanta Suite , The Consul''s File , The Family Arsenal , The Mosquito Coast , and his works of non-fiction, including the iconic The Great Railway Bazaar are available from Penguin.