Standard Deviations: Growing Up and Coming Down in the New Asia by Karl Taro Greenfeld ISBN 9789628631957 | Paperback | Chameleon Press | March 2003 | HK$89.00 Buy this book from Paddyfield.com

"I was twenty-three and I had set off for Asia to become a writer, intrigued by lurid tales of booms, busts, drugs, sex, violence, magic. There was a wicked sorcery in Asia, in the economic profligacy of the early nineties, in the way financiers and businessmen took a rapidly wiring and developing continent and looted billions, like a titanic parlor trick converting all that wealth into abandoned office complexes and half-completed shopping malls. . . . I wanted it all?the money, the sex, the drugs. And to this day I believe that if I am honest with myself, despite all I have learned the hard way over the past decade, I would still want it all again, the fucking and the getting loaded and the scheming to get enough money to pay for that life." "An insider's book, a wonderful account of travel in the decadent East." -- Paul Theroux

Review: The Asian Review of Books