Bangkok (Lonely Planet) - Andrew Burke [23]
Private Dancer, by popular English thriller author Stephen Leather, is another classic example of Bangkok fiction, despite having only been available via download until recently. One of the book’s main characters, Big Ron, is based on the real-life owner of Jool’s Bar & Restaurant, a Nana-area nightlife staple.
Jake Needham’s 1999 thriller The Big Mango provides tongue-in-cheek references to the Bangkok bargirl scene and later became the first expat novel to be translated into Thai.
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Many Thai authors, including the notable Khamphoon Boonthawi (Luk Isan) and Chart Kobjitt (Time), have been honoured with the SEA Write Award, an annual prize presented to fiction writers from countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). A one-stop collection of fiction thus awarded can be found in The SEA Write Anthology of Thai Short Stories and Poems (1996).
When it comes to novels written in English, Thai wunderkind SP Somtow has written and published more titles than any other Thai writer. Born in Bangkok, educated at Eton and Cambridge, and now a commuter between two ‘cities of angels’ – Los Angeles and Bangkok – Somtow’s prodigious output includes a string of well-reviewed science fiction/fantasy/horror stories, including Moon Dance, Darker Angels and The Vampire’s Beautiful Daughter. The Somtow novel most evocative of Thailand and Thai culture is Jasmine Nights (1995), which also happens to be one of his most accessible reads. Following a 12-year-old Thai boy’s friendship with an African-American boy in Bangkok in the 1960s, this semiautobiographical work blends Thai, Greek and African myths, American Civil War lore and a dollop of magic realism into a seamless whole.
All Soul’s Day (1997), by Bill Morris, is a sharp, well-researched historical novel set in Bangkok c 1963. The story, which involves vintage Buicks and the pre-Second Indochina War American military build-up, would do Graham Greene proud.
Thai-American Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s Sightseeing (2004), a collection of short stories set in present-day Thailand, has been widely lauded for its deft portrayal of the intersection between Thai and foreign cultures, both tourist and expat. Another name worth looking out for is Siriworn Kaewkan, whose novels The Murder Case of Tok Imam Storpa Karde and A Scattered World have recently been translated into English by Frenchman Marcel Barang. In fact Barang, who is also working on an updated translation of Four Reigns, is currently the most prodigious translator of Thai fiction into English, and several of his translations, including stories by Chart Korbjitti and two-time SEA Write winner Win Lyovarin, can be downloaded as e-books at www.thaifiction.com.
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MUSIC
Classical Thai
Classical central-Thai music (pleng tai deum) features a dazzling array of textures and subtleties, hair-raising tempos and pastoral melodies. The classical orchestra or Ъèe-pâht can include as few as five players or might have more than 20. Leading the band is Ъèe, a straight-lined woodwind instrument with a reed mouthpiece and an oboe-like tone; you’ll hear it most at moo·ay tai (Thai boxing; also spelt muay thai) matches. The four-stringed phin, plucked like a guitar, lends subtle counterpoint, while ránâht èhk, a bamboo-keyed percussion instrument resembling the xylophone, carries the main melodies. The slender sor, a bowed instrument with a coconut-shell soundbox, provides soaring embellishments, as does the klùi or wooden Thai flute.
One of the more noticeable Ъèe pâht instruments, kórng wong yài, consists of tuned gongs arranged in a semicircle and played in simple rhythmic lines to provide the music’s underlying fabric. Several types of drums, some played with the hands, some with sticks, carry the beat, often through several tempo changes in a single song. The most important type of drum is the đà·pohn (or tohn),