Life is a game of cards: Burning Angel and Other Stories, by Lawrence Osborne, reviewed

This compelling and unnerving collection of stories is Lawrence Osborne’s first, coming in the wake of recent critically acclaimed novels – including The Forgiven, adapted into a film – and earlier works of memoir, essays and travelogue. Born in England, currently residing in Bangkok, Osborne has earned comparisons with Graham Greene for his portraits of flawed white characters in foreign settings, and Patricia Highsmith, thanks to the menacing noir atmosphere. These nine stories, written over the past decade, do not disappoint.

Osborne removes his protagonists – English or American, on the young side of middle age – from their native environments and transplants them into exotic, perilous locations. Divorced from their habitual context, the characters tend to be coming to terms with a new-found solitude; dreams sometimes feature as their lives slide into nightmare.

There is a latent orientalism in this set-up that Osborne fruitfully explores and subverts.