White Faced Lies by Eric Flanagan My rating: 3 of 5 stars An interesting project. ‘White Faced Lies’ follows the journey of two ‘face jobbers’ in China. Face jobbers are foreigners who get paid to stand around and just look – well foreign – ideally American, white, tall, good-looking, and with blond hair. It is … White Faced Lies
THE SPOTTER A phalanx of drivers waited at the front of the arrivals hall. Standing with the others, Lucas had a sign for a certain Jorge Martínez: a passenger who would never arrive. Lucas was there to make an important decision, not to drive somebody into town. He thought it would be agony to choose. … Buenos Aires Triad Chapter 1
Lying in bed my eye felt like it was going to explode, finally, after hours, aqueous fluid and pus squirted out relieving the pressure. The pain subsided, but only for fifteen minutes. So began a rewarding experience of the public health sector in Argentina, one winter morning in 2010. After consulting my friend (who I … Argentina Sketches: Story of the Eye
Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel as Sartorial Sychophany As Venezuela has been the recipient of over half of China’s loans to South America, the ongoing crisis there is of concern to Beijing. China continues to support the embattled government of Nicolás Maduro and, like Russia and Turkey, doesn’t recognize … Fashion for Socialist Dictators: Maduro in China
Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel as Forbidden Portrait. In 2016, at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, I saw a black and white photo that didn’t compute at first. The photo featured a portrait of the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-Shek, hung above the Tiananmen gate of the Forbidden City … Chiang Kai-shek on the Forbidden City
She checked in wearing dark glasses. It didn’t seem weird as she had platinum blond hair and pale skin. I put her in a six-bed dorm. There was only one other guest in there, a Russian woman of twenty-five. Dorms were officially mixed but in practice, we generally kept men and women separate. We hadn’t … Argentina Sketches: The Albino Thief
Originally published in the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel as When Malaparte Met Mao. A former fascist sees only the good in Mao’s China. In 1956 Italian novelist Curzio Malaparte received an invitation to travel to Beijing for a commemoration of the death of writer Lu Xun. Malaparte is most famous for his … Eyes Wide Shut: Malaparte in China
“It began in the autumn of 2019. Months before the first reported case of human-to-human contact, the Wuhan Institute of Virology began to go dark. Publicly available information was wiped from the internet. Staff connected with the Institute disappeared as the scientists fiercely criticised its safety practices and standards. At the same time, there were … What Really Happened in Wuhan?
As a teenager, I read The Comedians and in my twenties The Power and the Glory, The Quiet American and The Human Factor. The Human Factor I read in a hostel in Colombia. In my early thirties, I bought a cheap copy of Our Man in Havana in Argentina. Reading it in Spanish, some of … Graham Greene Reviews
One of those old guys, hands clasped behind back, pausing every second step to see if there was something to stick his nose into. The way he dressed, grey slacks, polyester polo shirt with sleeveless pullover on top, didn’t indicate money, time abroad, or working in a big company. He had an educated air though. … China Sketches: BBQ
