Lightning on the Sun A Novel [Paperback]

From the highly acclaimed author ofPure Slaughter Valuecomes this latter-day literary noir about an ex-pat in Cambodia eager to get home but taking all the wrong turns.

Asher went to Cambodia to get away from Julie, his Harvard grad ex-girlfriend currently tending bar in a topless joint in New York. But when his UNESCO work cleaning bat dung from Khmer statues is finished, and he decides on a dicey heroin scheme as his means to get home with plenty of money to spare, it's Julie whose help he solicits. She agrees, but plans go dangerously awry frighteningly fast. A pulsating plot and precise literary prose makeLightning on the Suna startlingly compelling and strangely poetic tale.“[A] smart, stinging literary thriller reminiscent of Graham Greene and Robert Stone.”–San Francisco Chronicle

“[A] gripping literary thriller…. Bingham effortlessly builds suspense.”–Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times

“A powerful story about desire, greed, and the hope for redemption in a fallen world.”–Alan Cheuse
Robert Bingham was the author of the highly praised short story collectionPure Slaughter Value. He held an M.F.A. from Columbia and was a founding editor of the literary magazineOpen City.His fiction and nonfiction appeared inThe New Yorker,and he worked for two years as a reporter for theCambodia Daily.He died in 1999. chapter one

Asher waited for the bats. The little rats, he thought, where the fuck were they? All day long the bats took shelter in the eaves of the National Museum, waiting for dusk, waiting for the heat to die. Asher paced. The bats were late, and to be late on this particular evening was unsettling. Bad luck, bad karma, bad what? He did not know. He paced his porch, sweating. Asher's porch had a commanding view of the National Museum. It faced east and received good light in the late afternoon. l£!