Beach The

The irresistible novel that was adapted into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio.. The Khao San Road Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there in a low-budget guest house a fellow traveler slashes his wrists bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to the Beach.. The Beach as Richard has come to learn is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea with white sand and coral gardens freshwater falls surrounded by jungle plants untouched for a thousand years. There it is rumored a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture as Richard calls it has troubling even deadly undercurrents.. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties who burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture long for an unruined landscape but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.