Places remember us... In the restless city of Bangkok, there is a
house. Over the last two centuries, it has played host to longings
and losses past, present, and future, and has witnessed lives
shaped by upheaval, memory and the lure of home. A
nineteenth-century missionary pines for the comforts of New
England, even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam
increasingly difficult to resist. A jazz pianist is summoned in the
1970s to conjure music that will pacify resident spirits, even as
he's haunted by ghosts of his former life. A young woman in a time
much like our own gives swimming lessons in the luxury condos that
have eclipsed the old house, trying to outpace the long shadow of
her political past. And in the submerged Bangkok of the future, a
band of savvy teenagers guides tourists and former residents past
waterlogged landmarks, selling them tissues to wipe their tears for
places they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as their
stories collide and converge, linked by blood, memory, yearning,
chance, and the forces voraciously making and remaking the
amphibian, ever-morphing city itself. Praise for Bangkok Wakes to
Rain: 'Beautifully textured and rich with a sense of place, this is
a big, ambitious book. I love the way Sudbanthad so compellingly
captures not only the long arcs of these lives - but also the
smallest moments, and how those moments linger in memory, how they
haunt.' Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles
'There's a simple, ingenious conceit to this book - the stories a
house can contain, from Bangkok's colonial past to its antediluvian
future. This is a bold and tender novel about the unforgivable and
the unforgiven, and how to live past what you thought you could not
survive. Sudbanthad arrives to us already a masterful innovator of
the form - a startlingly original debut.' Alexander Chee, author of
The Queen of the Night 'Pitchaya Sudbanthad's beautiful, ambitious
first novel Bangkok Wakes To Rain moves with an elegant
restlessness that seems to match the city's own. Reading this book
feels like waking to a singular and important new voice.' Rajesh
Parameswaran, author of I Am An Executioner
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