Early 20th century French Indochina: a place where the cultures, passions and blood of East and West mixed freely. In 1925, American author Harry Hervey saw white men "sowing the legend of Civilization in soil too fecund to resist any new growth," inspiring his most vivid novel. In a tale drunk with sensuous beauty, irony and dark intensity, we experience the life of one young girl-a congai-named Thi-Linh. Born of an Annamite mother and French father, Thi-Linh-a creature of fragile beauty and savage instinct-embodies the dreams, ambitions and future of Indochina, where two disparate races struggled to become one. This expanded modern edition features a provocative foreword by renowned travel writer Pico Iyer; biographer Harlan Greene's author profile, "Through a Woman's Eyes: Congai, Heroines & Harry Hervey"; supplemental articles and a bibliography of Hervey's complete works. *** In his foreword, travel writer Pico Iyer comments: "Hervey opened the door to the way we would be seeing Indochina-on the page and in our heads-well into the 21st century. My deepest astonishment came with seeing how much Congai anticipates perhaps the greatest and most evergreen foreign novel about modern Vietnam, The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. Almost ninety years later, even in his wildest moments, Hervey caught something true that those of us more than twice his age can only bow before."

Harry Hervey's lush 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. *** "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." PICO IYER "Hervey sees the jungle one moment as a vindictive monster, the next as an annihilating river beneath which a whole civilization drowns." MARGARET MEAD-1928 "A gripping biography of that tawny courtesan Indochina-from her early amour with a race from India, to her present liaison with France...." BOOK JACKET-1927

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WHERE STRANGE GODS CALL PAGES OUT OF THE EAST BY HARRY HERVEY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRISTOPHER MURPHY Ever beyond a far. brown turning, Where the road falls, la the hearts desire. . . . A god calls. . . . R. S. ANDREWS. We be the gods of the East, Older than all Masters of mourning and feast How ahall we tall Will they gape to the husks that ye proffer, And yearn to your sonel And wo, have we nothing to offer, Who rulad them so long In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of the conch and tho gong BTTDTABD THE CENTURY CO. New York London FOR FRED, ANN, HARRIETT, KIT AND LEILA I UNFOLD THIS PEACOCK FAN OF MEMORY CONTENTS CHAPTER PAOT I MID-PACIFIC 3 II PIKE ISLAND 8 III TICK BEAT OK DRUMS 26 IV THE KINGDOM. OF CLATTERING SHOES . . 41 V THE SILKEN DRAGON 43 VI SHINTO THE WAI OF THE GODS ... 73 VII MA AME BKANCH-OF-LOVE 89 VIII TUB HBAVKNLY CITY 119 IX I WALK WITH LOTI A MOOD AT NAGASAKI 148 X IMPERIAL YELLOW 157 XI THE CITY OF SOMBER FACES CANTONESE FRAGMENTS 204 XII ZAMBOANGA 233 XIII THE COXJNTEY OF CONRAD 259 XIV ADVENTURE AN INTERLUDE BETWEEN SHIPS 306 XV A MAN IN SAVPRON 317 XVI TKK BLUE ROAD 346 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Sitting in golden shrines, calling . . Frontispiece 3TAC1NQ PAGE The drums of the surf pounding in blow-holes along the coast 20 Diamond Head, Honolulu 29 I found myself marveling at the almost sedate manner in which she went through the dance 36 The Kingdom of Clattering Shoes 45 The Procession of the Courtezans 56 U 0n spring days, on her high black-lacquered clogs, she would parade the streets with her maid . G8 C A granite torii, sufficiently huge to be consistent with the immensity of the natural surround ings 77 Shinto Festival at Nikko 84A street brilliant with banners of white and scarlet 93 The Japan of Madame Chrysanthhnc . . 112 She dances with quaint little gestures gentle as April rain - . - 129 A Kioto tomplc 136 Tho high priori, in brocades of crimson and gold 144 At Nagasaki - . CM, 152 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The harbour lay like a brilliant green arena in an amphitheater of encircling mountains . . 161 The tremulous heart of the native town . . . 176 Past gilded, vermilioned theaters and gambling houses moved sleepy-eyed beings 3 . . . 193 Rain in Canton 208 The Flower Boats lashed together, elaborately carved and gilded 216 Ugly, ramshackle dwellings and godowns sam pans, junks and lighters 225 Endless rows of shops and dwellings . . 228 Zamboanga 237 A church in Intramuros 257 The hotel, a series of blanched, red-roofed build ings 272 Javanese Actors 280 Hidden in reaches of luminous green were ponds and little streams 305 Singapore 312 She fluttered about the improvised stage like a drunken hummingbird 320 The mighty paya, or dome of the pagoda, flung itself nearly four hundred feet into the air 324 A lumber yard where mottled gray monsters were dragging logs or tossing their trunks de fiantly 333 A Shrine in the Shw Dagon Pagoda . . . . 336 WHERE STRANGE GODS CALL,