The Alpine Casanovas

Beat and Quyn share a Eurasian heritage – both are half Vietnamese, half European. Beat is a rock musician and star of Asian action movies who lives in the US, relying on sex, drugs and alcohol to survive. Whilst filming in Vietnam he fakes his own death and then watches the media circus from the refuge of a chalet high in the mountains. Quyn is the product of an adulterous affair between his father, a bootlegger, and the Vietnamese help. Brought up in the family barn, when Quyn’s father self-immolates, Quyn is left itinerant. Returning to his birthplace, he falls in with Benoit, a film director, with secrets of his own. Toni Davidson follows his acclaimed novels Scar Culture and My Gun Was As Tall As Me with his most accomplished and mature work to date, a bold, challenging and violent exploration of the loss of heritage, identity and community. As Davidson weaves a beguiling and complex web, both men are driven to near madness by the circumstances of their births, culminating in an explosive, shocking climax.

Reviews of The Alpine Casanovas

"Within a headlong story of adventure and suspense, a story masterfully structured around amazingly nuanced characters, My Gun Was As Tall As Me bears witness to the moral complexities attending the soul-shredding plights of internally displaced people and those trying to help them. For anyone who would make a difference in the world, this novel should be required reading." Jim Dodge