Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Tom Bissell is the author of Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, The Father of All Things, Why Video Games Matter, Magic Hours: Essays On Creators and Creation (2012) and Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve (2016). He also co-authored The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room (2013) with Greg Sestero. A recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award.
Tom Bissell is currently based in Los Angeles, California.
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In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a naive Peace Corps volunteer.
Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him
home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he
returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation
policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slipped
more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often
wild way to the devastated sea.
In his memoir, Chasing the Sea (2003), Bissell combines the story of his
travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan's striking culture and long
history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin.
Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating
place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.
In January 2005 he published a collection of short stories, God Lives In
St Petersburg, about Americans colliding with remote and often perilous
parts of Central Asia, such as Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
This interview was conducted shortly after the publication of Chasing
The Sea, and before the publication of God Lives In St Petersburg.
...
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