Bamboo Grove

"Buzzes with insight and imagination... big themes of environmental responsibility and escape, mental illness and the policing of joy. A very fine debut."
Richard Gwyn

A black comedy about sex, financial boom and bust, corruption, cultural collision, fertility and altruism.

In a heady neo-Orient, a galaxy of unlikely and unusual characters find themselves intricately, messily bound together in the unique, rather dubious corporation known as Eastern Vision. They include a pseudo-Buddhist monk, an illegal immigrant, a teenager with precarious mental health and a quixotic pair of young and hungry businessmen. Trading in everything from faux-Eastern art to real estate, from sperm donation to gypsy magic, Eastern Vision has reached the top of the money mountain, and fallen over the other side. As the bust takes its toll, the team and others battle for control, of the company, of each other and of themselves, as they hurtle towards an end none of them could have predicted.

"An unusual, engaging and unpredictable novel packed with a cosmopolitan cast of colourful characters."
Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical Wedding

Romy Wood taught drama in comprehensive schools for ten years. She works as an associate Lecturer for the Open University. This novel is informed by her experiences of Romania and Thailand, where she has friends and family, as it is by Romy''s life as a woman with Bipolar Disorder. She lives with her husband and three children in Cardiff.