The Khao San Road, Bangkok--first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."


The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck--the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man--and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach is a look at a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.

In this latest film from director Danny Boyle, a massive epidemic has swept the world, leaving in its wake a host of rabid humans seething with hatred and bent on destroying anyone untouched by the disease. Four seemingly unaffected people—a young man, a young woman, a father, and his daughter—flee London through an apocalyptic landscape as they try to reach the coast, beset along the way by attacks of “Infected” at every turn. When they arrive at an isolated house in the country, inhabited by a small group of soldiers, they think they have found a haven from the violence outside. But they soon find they’ve jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

编辑推荐：海滩是东南亚旅游者们纷传的尘世天堂：遥远的小岛上，白色的沙滩围绕着与世隔绝的环礁湖，有美丽的海底珊瑚园和丛林飞瀑，有吸不完的大麻，还有一群快乐无忧的“选民”。在曼谷的一家旅馆中，一位自杀的房客留给理查德一张地图，使他和两位同伴得以来到这块人们梦寐以求的乐土。然而，理查德不久即发现，海滩上的生活单调乏味，充满艰险，尤其是外部世界的无形压力，使每个人的心头都笼罩着沉重的阴影。最终，在一次夜间

The author of the international bestseller The Beach now serves us a gripping mystery and a stylistic tour de force that delves into the subconscious mind, with brilliantly disturbing results.

This mysterious and unsettling tale is illustrated by forty woodcuts created by the author's father, the political cartoonist Nicholas Garland.