Vicki Baum, best known as the author of
Grand Hotel and
The Weeping Wood fell in love with Bali on her first visit to the island in 1935. There she met German painter and musician Walter Spies, a longtime Bali resident with an unrivaled knowledge of Balinese life. He bequeathed her the raw material for fashioning this compelling tale.
Nigel Barley trained as an anthropologist and linguist and served some twenty years as an Assistant Keeper of the British Museum, where he was the curator of African and Indonesian collections. his most recent book, Island of Demons (Monsoon: Singapore), is a novelistic treatment of the artist Walter Spies and his milieu.