Lawrence Osborne is the author of “The Forgiven,” “Hunters in the Dark,” “The Ballad of a Small Player, “Beautiful Animals,” “The Wet and the the Dry,” “Bangkok Days,” “Only to Sleep” and “The Glass Kingdom.”
The Forgiven ( 2012 )
Once in a while, a novel comes along that has the slender, ripped body of sharp, exquisitely constructed literary fiction and the quicksilver, pumping mind of a slinky, gut-jabbing thriller. That novel, this year, is Lawrence Osborne’s The Forgiven…into this relatively quiet period for British fiction, someone remarkable and unexpected — lingering between the shadowy, post-colonial penumbra of Greene and the brave new horizons of a globalised world — has emerged fully armed with a formidable, masterly grip on the British novel - Robert Collins, The Sunday Times
The Forgiven shines darkly with a rich and mordant fatalism. Osborne's characters emerge like people in a dream – diamond-sharp but fascinatingly askew. His prose is gorgeous and precise; the story slices keenly through the exotic haze of its setting. It's an absolutely brilliant novel – the ending is a shock in the best way."
—Kate Christensen, author of The Epicure's Lament and The Astral
“The prose of The Forgiven has a very particular, knowing luminosity, much like the tarnished world it describes. A beautiful, compelling book to savor line by line.”
—Nikita Lalwani, author of Gifted
I’ll go right ahead say it : Osborne’s novel in the best on contemporary China since Malraux’s - Paul French, Los Angeles Times Book Review
A perfectly written existential thriller, a spooky, gripping, heart-in-your-mouth read that has profound things to say about the only god who rules human affairs – chance. - Neel Mukherjee New Statesman
“Osborne’s brilliance as a travel writer places his web of deceit, greed and need … in a world conjured up with dazzling immediacy … Sumptuous and sinister, languorous and tense, this is a novel that gives Osborne’s remarkable talents haunting scope" -Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
“With the first two of his three elegant, stylish and ambiguous novels – The Forgiven in 2012, The Ballad of a Small Player last year, and now Hunters in the Dark – Lawrence Osborne elicited comparisons to Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, James Salter, Paul Bowles, among others. He seems to be a revenant from a species that has, paradoxically, become almost extinct following the triumph of globalisation: the traveller (or travel-writer)-novelist. Indeed, Osborne describes himself as having led “a nomadic life”, living in Paris, New York City, Mexico, Istanbul and Bangkok. The novels reflect this: The Forgiven is set in Morocco, Ballad in the gambling dens of Macau, Hunters in the Dark in Cambodia; all feature westerners running up against, or adrift in, cultures that remain opaque to them. For Osborne, the mysteriousness of these non-western cultures is not an excuse to satisfy anew the jaded occidental appetite for exoticism. Instead, he seems to be engaged in turning inside out, in startling ways, that old Jamesian theme of the confrontation of old and new worlds, of innocence versus experience, except that the new world here is the European one, “dying on its feet of torpor and smugness and debt”, from which Osborne’s protagonists are in full flight.
“…A stroke of luck sets into motion the machinery of a plot that comes to resemble a Newton’s cradle, one sphere colliding with another and transferring its energy and momentum to it, and so on, in a long, complex series.
“Written with unfailing precision and beauty, Hunters in the Dark stakes out territory different from the many writers to whom Osborne has been compared.”
Neel Mukherjee, The Guardian
Beautiful Animals ( 2017 )
An astute, unsentimental critique of the contemporary world in crisis... "Osborne's distinguished palette includes the big yearning of Scott Fitzgerald and the decadent hedonism of Charles Baudelaire. Most impressive of all, and there is much to be impressed by, he handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do. Beautiful Animals is his most accomplished book so far -- a big, clever, crazed beast of a novel -Deborah Levy Financial Times
Spare, subtle… brilliantly achieved - Frances Wilson Times Literary Supplement
Complex and thrilling, Beautiful Animals confirms Osborne as one of Britain’s very best novelists -Anthony Gardner Mail on Sunday
Let’s not mince words : this is a great book - Lionel Shriver
Beautiful Animals is terrifically well constructed, written with mean authority, brilliantly evocative about place … A masterpiece of disaffection - David Sexton Evening Standard
Superlatively gripping… Osborne plunges his characters far from the luminescent surface and into the darkest depths -Anita Sethi
Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice - Katie Kitamura, New York Times Book Review
Brilliant…Osborne and Marlowe are a perfect match - William Boyd
Only to Sleep is a story about age and regret and murder. About the American Dream. About The Mexican Dream. It's the kind of book where, when you read it, it turns the world to black and white for a half-hour afterward. It leaves you with the taste of rum and blood in your mouth. It hangs with you like a scar — NPR
Nominated for an Edgar Award Best Novel 2019
The Glass Kingdom ( 2020 )
“Oozing menace, Osborne’s compelling novel is wonderfully atmospheric and deeply macabre” - Daily Mail
“A compulsively readable novelist of lean, prowling prose with a menacing, dark side” - Katie Law, Evening Standard
“Bangkok is the star of this accomplished novel. Its denizens are aliens to themselves, glittering on the horizon of their own lives, moving – restless and rootless and afraid – though a cityscape that has more stories than they know” - Hilary Mantel
“Coming off his acclaimed Philip Marlowe novel, Only to Sleep, the Bangkok-based Osborne here tilts toward Robert Stone…It′s a masterfully drawn, mesmerizing novel. . . . A seductive, darkly atmospheric thriller with a spine-tingling climax.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“There’s an ominous sense of foreboding from the first page, and the tension ratchets up to a terrifying pitch before the horrifying and brutal conclusion. A gripping read.”—Booklist (starred review)
A novel “On Java Road” and a collection of short stories, “Blood Eclipse and Other Stories” have been acquired by Hogarth Random House
“Mr. Osborne is a superb travel writer, one who, like Evelyn Waugh, can size up a locale at almost a glance. This intoxicating book has political as well as sensual overtones. It’s about how East and West think about alcohol; quite often it’s about one man’s search for his 6:10 p.m. martini in some very unlikely locations.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times