In a Strange Land is a collection of joined-up stories for these disjointed times, for the exiled and the out-of-place. Have you ever felt you are not where you should be? Rome's favourite love poet does; he must now entertain a bunch of hairy barbarians. A blood-stained dictator finds himself making breakfast for his nine youngest children in a Novotel. On the Edgware Road a Syrian ophthalmologist tells his girlfriend about a sudden career change whilst, on the other side of the city, a s...

It is 1983 and we are in Beijing. China has just started to re-open to Western trade after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. A young Englishman finds himself caught in a dilemma: will his desire for a Chinese girl make him willing to source forbidden technology for her father? And will their relationship be used to lure him into espionage? In this part-love story, part-thriller, Chris Ruffle reveals a China now vanished beneath the veneer of modernization.

Here is a collection of joined-up stories for these disjointed times, for the exiled and the out-of-place. Letters from love poets and blood-stained dictators, memos from corrupt businessmen and out-of-touch courtiers. The action stretches from Chislehurst to the Chagos Islands, from bathos to Billericay.