Born in 1944 to a Vietnamese mother and Indian father, Charles Sobhraj grew up deprived of a sense of identity, moving to France before being imprisoned and stripped of his multiple nationalities. Driven to floating from country to country, Sobhraj was the consummate con artist, but as his situation grew more perilous, he turned to murder, preying on Western tourists throughout the 1970s. The inspiration for the 2021 Netflix series The Serpent, Sobhraj landed at the top of INTERPOL's most wanted list, but as this biography recounts, he also became a living legend and an international celebrity.