The Beach (novel) The Beach (novel) The Beach is a 1996 novel by English author Alex Garland. Set in Thailand, it is the story of a young backpacker's search for a legendary, idyllic and isolated beach untouched by tourism, and his time there in its small, international community of backpackers. In 2000, it was adapted into a film directed by Danny Boyle and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read. In a cheap hotel on the Khao San Road in Bangkok, Richard, a young American backpacker, meets a mentally disturbed Scotsman going by the
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (novel) for gay rights movements had become visible in the public sphere. Sociologically, it is suggested that the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) – whose symbol was a seven-headed cobra – were influenced in their choice of name by Greenlee's use, in the novel, of the word "symbiology", a term derived from the biological term "symbiosis", which describes disparate organisms living together in a mutually beneficial relationship. The original UK book-jacket for "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" carried endorsements by the political activist Dick Gregory, who called the novel "an important, original, nitty-gritty book"; by the novelist Len Deighton, who