Some journeys take you to the front lines. This one takes you to Bangkok, 1968 — five hundred miles from the Vietnam War, close enough to feel the heat, populated by the most chaotically incompetent intelligence operation in American military history. Apricot Marmalade is a travel book for the soul of the absurd.
Orey actually served there. The Thailand setting isn’t a postcard, it’s a living presence — steaming jungles, snake-filled streets, competing intelligence agencies from three countries stumbling over each other’s surveillance operations.
Ed Reynolds, the protagonist, just wants to survive his stretch and go home. What he gets instead is the full tour. A brilliant, funny, deeply human book.
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