Gold by the Inch Hardcover - 1998

From the publisher

The narrator of Gold by the Inch, a young New Yorker of Asian descent, has returned to the country of his birth following a disastrous relationship and his father's death. Thailand is in the throes of rampant economic development, and everyone the narrator meets -- from noodle-shop owners to his own relatives to the jaded children of the rich -- seems to be drunk on the nation's financial miracle. Or high on something else. The latter is true of Thon, the very young, very beautiful male prostitute who works at a Bangkok nightclub and with whom the narrator becomes romantically obsessed. As he tries to convince himself that their affair transcends the limits of commercial love, the narrator is forced to look at the connections between desire and exploitation, personal and national identity.

In succinct, luminous prose, Lawrence Chua combines vivid accounts of Southeast Asia's troubled history with evocations of its modern face: its polyglot culture, its crumbling colonial edifices, the Blade Runner futurism of its sex industry and skyscrapers. Gold by the Inch is an important addition to the growing body of literature that is defining the Asian diaspora.