He's initially uneasy in Thailand, hoping to be transferred away he harbors suspicions of the Thai people who he's meant to treat, writing in a letter, 'They are a proud, even arrogant people, having yet to come under the domain of a more advanced nation. One storyline follows Phineas Stevens, a 19th-century American missionary and doctor assigned to work in Bangkok.

The stories are linked, although this doesn't become apparent until late in the book. It's a complex novel-in-stories, and a very good debut book from a promising new voice in fiction.īangkok Wakes to Rain straddles the line between novel and short story collection - it's broken into 23 chapters, some brief vignettes, some more substantive. It's a fitting beginning for a novel suffused with the possibility of menace - the characters in Bangkok Wakes to Rain endure heartbreak, disease, climate disaster and violence, much of which takes place in or around the building in the first chapter, a condominium tower that used to be a house. The chapter ends there, suddenly and ominously.

'Some uproar above compels her to look up,' Sudbanthad writes, and 'her instincts command her to cross her arms overhead, turn away, and brace.' Would it ever matter?') approaching 'the building she thinks of as home.' She enters the building's lobby, contemplates taking the elevator upstairs to see her parents, but she's suddenly hit with an unsettling feeling, and leaves. Pitchaya Sudbanthad's novel, Bangkok Wakes to Rain, opens with a woman of indeterminate age ('She is a child or a few thousand years old. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Bangkok Wakes to Rain Author Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Bangkok wakes to rain a novel