Read Around the World Thailand

This is one of the few books by a female Thai author translated into English. Veeraporn Nitiprapha has also won the S.E.A. Write Award twice, the first woman to do so. The story is a short literary fiction set in Thailand from the 1980s into the 21st century. It is a lush lyrical nonlinear story that Nitiprapha herself describes as "A melodrama of shipwrecked romance."

It begins with sisters Chalika and Chareeya, born in Nakhon Chai Si, a riverside town outside of Bangkok, into the tragic remnants of their parents’ marriage. “War, flash floods, landslides or the fall of empires can’t diminish the simple happiness that can only be felt by someone who doesn’t understand she’s just a child. The girls leapt out of the charred ruins of their parents’ marriage with only a few scars on their hearts. They rolled about in the orchards all day like animal cubs, scooping laughter and joy out of thin air as if by magic.”

The story traces the lives of the two girls and their childhood friend Pran through a series of romances, deaths, ghost stories and tragedies enough to fill either a Thai soap opera or a fever dream. The book is full of lush descriptions of food, classical music and plants. I found my attention wandering, by around the middle, and the non linear style somewhat difficult to follow. The translation was well done, although I’m not sure I needed the inserts explaining to me what Tom Yum soup is. I appreciated the beauty of the writing but the melodrama wasn’t entirely for me, so 3.5 stars overall. ( )

This novel is unlike anything I have read before, but I did not worry about that - I just went along for the ride. The protagonists are Chareeya and Chalika, two young sisters who grow up with their emotionally unavailable parents, and Pran, a boy who does not have a real home and spends his time at their house. The novel follows these three for many years, but not in strictly chronologically form. The reader receives snippets from their lives, chapter after chapter, but has to piece together much of it. The things that happen are often heartbreaking: Loves are lost, feelings betrayed, someone dies, children are left to themselves, emotions are hidden. All of this is infused with metaphors and images, more often than not botanical, as well as described through music (there is even a playlist in the end). Many aspects are exaggerated and even appear magical - influenced by Thai classical theatre and popular Thai soap operas - and after reading the last pages, I feel like waking up myself in the humid air of Thailand, amongst a tangle of colorful flowers and listening to tropical birds.

The novel was translated into English by Kong Rithdee, who also added a very interesting introduction about the pitfalls and difficulties of translating from Thai to English. ( )

Thailand