Alfred Raquez Author

`Alfred Raquez' was the pseudonym of Joseph Gervais, a bankrupt French lawyer who fled to the Far East in the late 1890s. He wrote prolifically about Indochina and took some of the earliest photographs and field sound recordings in Laos. He died under mysterious circumstances in Marseille in 1907. Confidence man, intrepid explorer, dashing bon vivant, proto-photojournalist and amateur ethnographer in equal parts, Raquez offers one of the more intriguing voices (not to mention mystery-filled yarns) of any commentator on the mix of ambitions and follies of European colonial expansion into the Far East. California-native William L. Gibson is an author, researcher and sound artist based in Southeast Asia. Singapore Red, the final installment in his trilogy of hard-boiled crime fiction set in 1890s Malaya, was published in 2017. Paul Bruthiaux taught linguistics in universities in California, Texas, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand. He is now a language consultant, editor, and translator and lives in Chiang Mai.