Richard Arthur 
I of the Sun 
A Journey into Southeast Asia and the Heart of Consciousness

In terms of your place in the world, it is your actions that define you. Every moment of your life you are always, necessarily doing something. And so the question is – why do you do what you do? A young man travels on a one-way ticket to South East Asia in search of freedom and everything that comes with it. Free from responsibility, free from others, free from himself. That way he’ll really learn what makes him tick. He discovers paradise islands, beautiful mountains and electric cities; gets hooked on crazy liquor, cheap pills, loose women and easy living. He has various run-ins on motorbikes and in the jungle, with butterflies and ladyboys, socio-narcotic minefields, hustlers, mafia, mad men and mystics. All the while surfing the fine line between East and West, imagination and reality, sanity and madness, life and death; as he follows the crazy, impossible dream to go everywhere, meet everyone and do everything. On his quest to discover the meaning of freedom, he also goes on an intellectual journey through various areas of philosophy, history and science, in order to discover whether or not we are truly masters of our own will; and if we are, then how do we control ourselves? His quest takes us to the very core of human consciousness. At turns beautiful and ugly, hilarious and horrifying, exalted and base, I of the Sun takes the reader on an epic journey following the Sun around South East Asia and into the heart of what it means to be human, on a young man’s literary and philosophical tour de force.