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 Beach (novel) as "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord of the Flies", and the anonymous memoirs of an escaped Australian prisoner. Although set in Thailand, Garland wrote the book while living in the Philippines and in particular was inspired by similar geography on the island of Palawan . Novelist Nick Hornby referred to "The Beach" as "a "Lord of the Flies" for Generation X", and the "Sunday Oregonian" called it "Generation X's first great novel". "The Washington Post" wrote that it is "a furiously intelligent first novel" and "a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can