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Remember The Piano Tuner? Published by Vintage, it came out in 2003 to almost universal critical acclaim, and managed to get onto bestsellers’ lists in more than 20 countries, including Hong Kong. A lushly recounted yarn set in the jungles of late 19^th-century Burma, this novel penned by American Daniel Mason features a British piano tuner sent to retune a piano on the other side of the world, for reasons too convoluted to explain here. Suffice to say, it was a hell of a good yarn, and a well-deserved international smash for its Harvard-graduate author.

Outrageously lucky in addition to having formidable talent, and a shrewd agent, Mason succeeded in flogging the movie rights. In production and being directed by Werner Herzog, you’ll be able to catch this extraordinary Heart of Darkness-style epic on the big screen sometime in 2010. But it would behoove you to read the book first; The Piano Tuner’s densely woven texture will likely lose something in the transition to film.

All of this brings me to the next overripe Southeast Asian plum that dozens of publishers are waiting for – and hoping won’t fall into the competition’s lap. It’s out there and it’s ripening and it’s called The Last Gods of Indochine. I got talking to the Hong Kong-based author – another Ivy leaguer (Yale this time) – and managed to get a sneak preview. Could The Last Gods Of Indochine be the next Piano Tuner?

The novel opens with a prologue set in Laos in 1861. A dying elderly man is attended to by two carers. He’s delirious, apparently as a result of some tropical disease. We then leap to the Paris of 1921, where a prim young lady, Jacquie, is readying to go East, “the first Mouhot to go to Indochina since Henri” – evidently Henri was the twitching corpse we came across in the prologue. He’s actually her grandfather, and the great French explorer who did indeed “discover” Angkor Wat about 180 years ago.

Off Jacquie sets to L'Extrême-Orient, but on her long voyage east she is haunted by dreams of a boy who appears to hail from the golden age of the Khmer civilization.  As the story gathers pace, rationality and superstition get locked into the kind of epic conflict that is the stuff of all great narratives.

The Last Gods of Indochine is an elaborate and self-assured interweaving of historical fact and keenly imagined fiction, that benefits greatly from the use of authentic-like “official correspondence” such as letters by “the British Consul in Bangkok”, as well as Jacquie’s journal entries.

There are flashes of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American in here too; I’m not sure if this was intentional. In any event, remember where you read about The Last Gods of Indochine first.

Nick Walker