Morada native to return from Hong Kong for book signing
Morada native Sam Ferrer will return to California from Hong Kong to host a book signing for his debut novel, “The Last Gods of Indochine.” The novel, released in September 2016 by Sign 8 Press, was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize — making Ferrer the only person not of Asian descent to have been nominated for Asia’s most prestigious literary award. Only people living within a selection of countries in Asia are eligible for the award.
“I created a fictitious granddaughter for a historical explorer who is credited for discovering the ancient temples of Angkor Wat,” Ferrer said. “In 1921, at the height of the French colonial empire, she retraces her famous grandfather’s footsteps to Indochina, but is haunted by the possible discovery of a reincarnated life.”
Inspired by the real life of explorer Henri Mouhot, who lived from 1826 to 1881, the novel centers around Mouhot’s fictitious granddaughter and uses excerpts from the journal that made Mouhot famous after his death in the jungles of Laos. The journal was published posthumously in 1863.
“Meanwhile, a parallel story interweaves with her own,” Ferrer said. “In medieval Cambodia, an orphan whose community believes he is a reluctant incarnation of a god causes sectarian turmoil for the kingdom’s leaders. A curse bonds the two stories and forces the granddaughter to confront an impossible choice.”
Ferrer became motivated to write the story after a trip to Cambodia.
“During that trip I was struck by a photograph of welldressed promenaders and vintage cars at the footsteps of a full-scale reconstruction of the top level of Angkor Wat at the 1922 Colonial Exposition in Marseilles,” he said. “I was taken by the exploration and imagination of La Belle Époque and how the French fixation on the East captured what was perhaps the most exotic time during the colonial age.”
The book takes readers on a journey to an exotic time and place that hasn’t been featured well enough in literature, Ferrer said.
“The historical research is extensive ... ,” he said. “But even more importantly, it is a journey into the lives of characters who struggle with hardships and dilemmas that should still resonate with a modern reader.”
Writing the novel was dream Ferrer didn’t expected to come true until much later in life, but fate had a different plan, he said. Before completing the story, he’d only made modest attempts at creative writing.
“After committing myself to the premise of this story, I joined a writers’ critique group and presented my material to other writers over the course of a couple of years. I then took summer writing classes at the University of Iowa,” Ferrer said.
Then, while living and traveling abroad, he got to work.
“In fact, I wrote a great deal of ‘The Last Gods of Indochine’ in the bars of Bangkok, Saigon, Hanoi, the cafes of Laos, in the mountains of Sapa, and of course on location throughout Cambodia,” he said. “It was well over 10 years of editing and tweaking before I was finally offered a contract, and even then we still did some fine-tuning of the manuscript.”
Ferrer plans to started another novel later this year, but for right now he is focusing on producing a CD for his band, Shaolin Fez.
Originally from Morada, Ferrer attended Lodi Unified schools starting in kindergarten, and is a 1988 graduate of Tokay High School. Ferrer received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California and a master’s from Yale University. He also spent a year between degrees studying in Paris, sponsored by the San Joaquin County Rotary Club.
Ferrer has lived in Hong Kong for almost 15 years, after winning a place playing bass for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
“We have a 44-week season, which includes touring internationally and recording. I also do some teaching on the side,” he said.
He thoroughly enjoys living in Hong Kong and says its much safer than the United States.
“In a city of over 7 million people, there is not one neighborhood where a woman would feel unsafe walking late at night,” Ferrer said. “When I go back to the States, my subconscious ‘crime radar’ immediately turns on, and only then do I realize just how nice it has been to have it off.”
Public transportation in Hong Kong is efficient, clean, and cheap, Ferrer added, so he hasn’t owned a car the whole time. Taxes in Hong Kong are also extremely low compared to the U.S., he said.
For Ferrer, traveling within Asia is always an adventure.
“As (Hong Kong is) a kind of city-state, traveling always means getting in an airplane, and the vacations in this region are as exotic as they get. I have severe wanderlust, so living out here suits me well,” he said.