Bible of the Dead

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the many authors I have read, over the years, in the various subjects pertaining to the themes of this novel. In particular I owe a huge debt to Karen Armstrong, Nic Dunlop, Dith Pran, Haing Ngor, David Lewis Williams, Jean Guillaine and Jean Zammit, Steven A. Leblanc, Roland Neveu, Dave Grossman, Jean Clottes, Robert Wright, Jon Swain, Philip Short, Steven Pinker – and dozens of others.

My great friends and colleagues Peter Dench and Dan White, brilliant photographers both, have always been ready to tell me – over a warm beer in London, or a cold beer in Bangkok – just how wrong I am about almost everything. Without them, this book wouldn’t exist in any sensible form. I am similarly indebted to my editors Jane Johnson, Joy Chamberlain and Josh Kendall, and also to Coralie Saint-Genis.

Above all, I am grateful to the many people who helped with my more difficult research in China, Cambodia and Laos.

I’ll not forget the Hmong family who helped me as much as I helped them, when we were all stuck in the Laotian jungle one long muddy night. And thanks to Paksan for not being embarrassed when I nearly blubbed at the beauty of the snow mountains near Zhongdian. And I owe a debt of gratitude to the Lozère tourist authorities in France, and the guide who showed me around miraculous Gargas cave on that sunny day in late September.