Sudbanthad draws a subtle but achingly lovely account of their courtship, born of the hopeful spirit of the protests-then pivots to a shocking conclusion. In one, a young Thai man named Siripohng, who has come to the city to attend university, meets a woman named Nee during the massive student demonstrations in 1973. Many are stories of loss and of survival. But as those seemingly unconnected stories accumulate, so do the threads that join them. In its early chapters, the book reads like a collection of short stories linked only by their relationship to Bangkok: A nameless woman walks through its bustling streets in the present an American doctor more than 100 years ago struggles to decipher its overwhelmingly foreign culture a Thai photographer living in Los Angeles in the 1970s visits his ailing father in London a woman running a Thai restaurant in Japan finds herself threatened by Thailand’s politics. In his debut novel, a writer born in Thailand and now living in New York creates a portrait of Bangkok that sweeps across a century and a teeming cast of characters yet shines with exquisite detail.
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