Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In 2009, Julian Sayarer was working on a documentary in the Andaman Sea about a community of Moken "sea gypsies" who live their lives on the water. There he met the skipper of the boat that had been chartered for the crew. Laurie was a 70 year-old Australian-Brit, five times divorced and inspired by reading On the Road at age 17, sailed twice around the world, smuggled marijuana, falsely framed by business rivals as an opium smuggler, crashed into oil tankers whilst falling asleep at the wheel of the boat, and hired as a diver for buried treasure in the Scilly isles.
With his typical elegance and angry grace, Julian Sayarer tells Laurie's life story of adventure and that of the Moken people, alongside the concurrent rise of mass tourism, climate change, and the digital and visual culture that dominates our lives. Sayarer paints a troubling picture of two worlds at odds with each other.
Synopsis
On the small island of Surin, near the naval border of Thailand and Myanmar, an indigenous people known as Moken 'sea gypsies' struggle to maintain the same timeless existence as their ancestors.
As real estate developers, oil exploration and industrial tourism reshape the waters they call home, Sayarer receives a mysterious offer from an idealistic Luxembourger determined to tell a tale of the Moken on film, and in search of a writer to detail the efforts of his motley crew.
Events unfold in a reality strangely different to that version captured by the lens. In the quest for indigenous wisdom, cameras and tripods clutter bamboo huts, while fishing trips and dives are staged beneath the waves. With the quest for paradise seeming ever more artificial, award-winning author, Julian Sayarer instead begins listening to the stories of Laurie, an old sailor, with a life on the water behind him, and in whose ship the crew sail out into the Andaman Sea.
Synopsis
Sayarer is a precise and passionate writer . . . The vast energy of his commitment to discover, observe and communicate makes for engrossing, often incandescent prose. We need writers who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer is a marvellous example HORATIO CLARE
On the small island of Surin, near the naval border of Thailand and Myanmar, an indigenous people known as Moken 'sea gypsies' struggle to maintain the same timeless existence as their ancestors. As real estate developers, oil exploration and industrial tourism reshape the waters they call home, Sayarer receives a mysterious offer from an idealistic Luxembourger determined to tell a tale of the Moken on film, and in search of a writer to detail the efforts of his motley crew. Events unfold in a reality strangely different to that version captured by the lens. In the quest for indigenous wisdom, cameras and tripods clutter bamboo huts, while fishing trips and dives are staged beneath the waves.
With the quest for paradise seeming ever more artificial, award-winning author, Julian Sayarer instead begins listening to the stories of Laurie, an old sailor, with a life on the water behind him, and in whose ship the crew sail out into the Andaman Sea.