$12.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play (October 2026)War in Shangri-La: A Memoir of Civil War in Laos by Mervyn Brown (XXX,000 words, YY illustrations)
“[In the 1960s] Laos was a major focus of world interest, and through it all, from June 1960 to April 1963, Mervyn Brown was First Secretary at the British Embassy in Vientiane. This is the memoir, therefore, of an insider who was deeply involved in the diplomatic manœuvering that went on, and who himself was the focus of world attention when he was captured and held for a month by communist guerrillas. Brown tells his story well, interweaving the personal and the political with sufficient history and background to keep the reader with limited knowledge of South-East Asia fully informed.” — Martin Stuart-Fox, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
“[I]n Laos [in the 1960s...] communist guerrillas, backed by North Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union, were battling a Western-supported government in Vientiane... As a young diplomat on one of his first overseas postings, Brown got caught in the middle of this conflict. He even spent a month in 1962 as a prisoner of the communists... Brown’s first-hand experience makes the events come alive, including the power struggles and intrigues in Vientiane at the time... an excellent account of how the war was fought and lost in Laos. All the characters are there: King Savang Vatthana, the mundane statesman Souvanna Phouma, Souphanouvong (‘the Red Prince’) who sided with the communists, the neutralist ‘little captain’ Kong Lae, the CIA’s shadowy operatives who manipulated events from behind the scenes, a French artist who made a modest living by painting Laotian landscapes, and the correspondent for Time magazine, Peter Simms, who was the model for John le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy... a lively and comprehensive introduction to one of Asia’s least-known countries.” — Far Eastern Economic Review