About the Author Karl Levy was born in 1967 at St Leonards Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to his artist potter father Colin Levy OAM and mother Margaret, a painter. He grew up with two brothers, Rikyu and Donyu, named after Japanese Tea Ceremony masters, on a large family property in Bowen Mountain, outside of Sydney. Leaving these artistic surrounds, he left to study music at the University of Wollongong. Lured to finance in the roaring eighties with many other twenty-somethings, the arts were cast aside to work in stockbroking with Rivkin and Co and later as a futures trader on the Sydney Futures Floor. He left the corporate world to travel extensively through the Middle East – in Israel, Jordon, Syria, Egypt and Turkey – and visited both the United States and England. On return to Australia he rejected high finance to become a tree lopper throughout his thirties. Yet another change of lifestyle occurred, revisiting the corporate world in 2008, to broker commodity derivatives in Singapore for six years and further his financial studies to become a CFA Charterholder. Visiting many South-east Asian countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia, the alternative lifestyle again beckoned and he returned to his artistic roots to reside in Siem Reap in Cambodia to write.