What Are Some Good Novels Which Are Based In Thailand?

[Lami]

They have probably already been mentioned, but do read:

"Phra Farang: An English Monk in Thailand" and "Little Angels" by Phra Peter Pannapadipo .

If you have not seen poverty in Thailand first hand, or understood the reasons why change to break the cycle of poverty cannot occur easily for many Thais, these books will provide the missing insights.

They will also provide a worthy channel for your desire to help: http://www.thaistudentcharity.org/ .

Edited April 11, 2009 by Lami

[fabianfred]

I'm tempted to suggest 'Dear Uncle Go' but I'm afraid it contains too much sex.

Funny you should mention that book....... When I was learning to read Thai in my early days here I came across his pages in the Thai magazine "Plaek" and managed to work my way through quite a lot of those....easily available in the secondhand book stalls...... and only half of the stories were gay....he was like an agony aunt....mostly for teenagers.............excellent view of the Thai perspective on sex.

Two things I remember from those readings were a couple of Thai expressions he often used........ a teacher who messed about with his students was referred to as "Jawawat kin kay Wat"....an abbot who eats the temple chickens.......... and one who "Pang pratuu lang".... 'breaks the back door....is also referred to as "len tua dam"...'playing with black beans'..... maybe archaic expressions now since this was twenty years ago

[fabianfred]

Could anyone post some links to some more free Thailand related ebooks? I have Private Dancer already.

Thanks

This guy's blog has a few interesting pdf files for download..... "living in Thailand is OK".... he had a novel before on pdf called "LOS Tots network...." about an underage sex ring...quite good.....but it doesn't seem to be on the site now...maybe he got a publisher

[fabianfred]

I really enjoyed 'Touch the Dragon' by Karen Conolly too...

and there was one about an attempted robbery of gold from the Temple of the Golden buddha (Wat traimit) called 'golden buddha'..

There was a good one about a young girl who fled the home she was working as a maid in when the owner started showing interest in her and ended up on the game.... 'Confessions of...... 'something??

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "The Solitary man" by Stephen Leather which has the main character in a Thai jail....excellent as are all his books...

Also very surprised nobody has read these by Colin Falconer ..."Opium" ..... "Triad" ... and "Venom".... all set in Thailand (mostly)

[polecat]

Anyone read any of Nick Wilgus's novels? The Father Ananda series etc.

[jayboy]

I have to admit that I have not read The Big Mango (but I have a bookstore with the same name), but before Bangkok 8 came out, Jake Needham was the most popular local author. People also said that he writes quite well, but John Burdett came along and kind of left him in the dust.

Pretty much anything by Jake Needham, Steve Leather or Chris Moore is good. They are a cut above all the other local authors. Most of Steve's books are set in the UK but his Thailand stuff is all good. Ditto Needham. Chris Moore understands Thailand better than all the authors and his books are almost unique in that they could only be set here. Pretty much everything he has published in the last 5 years has been great.

I am not sure why pepole like to shit on Jake Needham. He is a very accomplished writer and funnily enough, out with Steve Leather tonight Steve speaks very highly of Jake's books and writing ability.

I guess it is that usual Bangkok problem - envy. Jake is a successful guy with a gorgeous, highly intelligent wife and a happy family life. So people speak ill of his books because they are jealous of what he has and what he has achieved. Sad.

Burdett can write but I don't like his books at all.

Hi Stickman

I'm afraid I have to disagree.The book reviews on your site make it clear that you are primarily interested in a rattling good read rather than literary merit.Nothing wrong with that but it's useful to know as it porvides your opinions with context.The authors you mention may be a cut above other locally based authors but the bar is set really low.Have you seen the range of similarly titled rubbish on sale at Asia Books and elsewhere? Since I know nothing about their personal circumstances I can hardly be jealous of the authors you mention.John Burdett is a genuine talent.Other than Burdett,Steve Leather is certainly an international success but in my view his forte is pulp fiction for impulse buys at airports etc.Nevertheless international success does actually prove Leather has ability of a kind.Jake Needham and Christopher Moore are puzzling since both have sensibility and intelligence but somehow quality gets lost in the cooking.Moore is a classic case of someone who should extend his range, but Needham is I'm afraid dull and deriviative.Needham will never achieve success outside Thailand, unless that long promised Hollywood version of one of his unreadable novels appears one day.

My favourite? John Ralston Saul who was mentioned earlier

[coxhoedave]

I've decided to resurrect this thread as it's too good to die!!

After years of selling off or lending out and losing books I've decided hold on to my favourites.

The ones I haven't lost include most of Stephen Leather's books plus a couple of John Burdett's (Bangkok 8 & Bangkok Tattoo). I'll be buying Bangkok Haunts soon. I've also got a few Anthony Grey novels. I'm a little surprised Anthony Grey hasn't featured on this thread. His book "The Bangkok Secret" is certainly work seeking out although it's not as good as "Saigon", maybe my favourite novel of all time.

When it comes to books, Ulysses G seems to speak a lot of sense and when I saw him recommend John Ralston Saul I bought "The next best thing". I'm just a few pages into it but it looks as if it's going to be brilliant. Looks like I'm going to have to look out for the other Field Trilogy books "Baraka" and "The Paradise Eater". Ulysses G also recommended Dean Barret's "Memoirs of a Bangkok warrior". That will be another I'll have to keep my eyes open for.

If a novel is good or bad is by is large subjective. A perfect example being Stephen Leather's "Private Dancer" (I loved it). Another love it or hate it book is Andrew Hick's "Thai girl" It has come in for a little stick here but it's been reprinted in several occasions so it maybe worth a look and draw my own conclusion.

Another author who hasn't featured is Neil Hutchinson, I read a couple of his books a few years back. I think they were "A fool in Paradise" & "Money number One". Again I enjoyed these books but I can imagine them getting a real slating from certain TV members. I emailed him about a certain section of one of his books and he sent a friendly reply. He does not pretend to be literary giant but just a friendly genuine guy with something worth saying.

"The Falcon of Siam" was one of the many books I've lost over the years and while I found it readable, it was hardly the sort of book I couldn't put down.

Thanks to this thread I'm now looking out for books by Collin Piprell, Jim Newport, Michel Houllebecq & Dean Barret.

Any more ideas please keep them coming!!!

[tomahawk]

I just finished reading novel called Freedom Highway, by Nigel Krauth, which is the best novels about corruption in Thailand I have ever read. It is set in the fifties and although it did sort of aggravate me as the bad guys are mostly American, which seems to be the usual these days, but even so I believe it is a very well written and suspenseful novel, in my opinion. However my favorite fictional books set in SE Asia are the Colin Cotterill novels about the coroner in Laos. They are some of the funniest books I ever read.

[Meridian007]

Probably the best novel set in thailand is "The Falcon of Siam" - I forget the authors name.

I read the book but it was a struggle to finish, I think the last chapter I did not read. I found it too academic, like the historybooks I had to study in my schooldays and which are one of the reasons many people have develloped a livelong aversion against schools and sometimes against reading books at all. Too many numbers you have too learn, when lived king such and so, when was the war between X and Y etc., without giving any insight in the how and why and the live of ordinary people. Especially Thai historybooks are often no more then the lifes of the kings and the wars they fought.

Oooo, I love books like this! Now I'll have to find it! (but then again I enjoyed Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur") If a book can entertain me and teach me some history, then I love it!

I found a book that I haven't begun yet, it isn't in Thailand, but is close. George Orwell's "Burmese Days". It looks like it will be an interesting read.

[ArthurPewty]

I have tried a couple and they are quite poor. I would suggest some of the factual books on life in Issan etc. I have found those very enjoyable.

[sceadugenga]

Just finished "Death in the Kingdom" by Andrew Grant.

Stephen Leather type action by a writer with a good local knowledge of Thailand.

[Ulysses G.]

I found a book that I haven't begun yet, it isn't in Thailand, but is close. George Orwell's "Burmese Days". It looks like it will be an interesting read.

Excellent fiction by Mr Orwell.

If you like this, try some of Sommerset Maughm's short stories that are set in this area. All great!

[mrtoad]

Just started reading Blowback by Michael Forwell, which so far has been a nice easy, entertaining read.

[Somrak]

Sorry, did not read all above.

But the best, plays in parts in Thailand, i can recommend:

Michel Houellebecq - Platform

......"Aujourd'hui, maman est morte," is how Camus began his challenge to French wartime fiction in L'Etranger. "Father died last year," begins Houellebecq in homage. Houellebecq's chief character, Michel, is an accountant at the ministry of culture in Paris. He watches television and visits peep-shows in the way of such characters in fiction. When his father is murdered on a point of honour by a north African, Michel inherits some money and joins a package tour to Thailand, where he migrates between massage parlours and the bottle. The other tourists are fat and plebeian.While in Thailand, Michel falls in love with Valérie, an employee of the tour company, which is in business difficulties. Back in Paris, they embark on a love affair. With the narrative in the doldrums, the sex becomes wet, various and frantic. Michel persuades Valérie and her boss to convert the company's hotels in Thailand and the Caribbean to sex tourism. The new package holidays are a success with the Germans - a stupid race, apparently, notoriously without culture. Michel is thinking about babies and learning to cook when some Muslim terrorists - young men with turbans, anyhow - blow Valérie and 116 prostitutes and their customers to pieces. ..... http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/sep/0...uellebecq/print

In 2000, Houellebecq published the short fiction Lanzarote (published in France with a volume of his photographs), in which he develops a number of the themes he would later explore in later novels, including fringe religions and cult leaders. His subsequent novel, Plateforme (2001), earned him a wider reputation. It is a romance, told mostly in the first-person by an aging male arts administrator, with many sex scenes and an approbation of prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and its explicit (???) criticism of Islam, together with an interview its author gave to the magazine Lire, led to accusations against Houellebecq .........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Houellebecq

[hongkonger]

You're just looking forward to the Brit bashing.

I hadn't realized. I'll get right on it.

So you love Brit bashing eh?

Despite that I'll take your criticism of "Thai Girl" on the nose though because the book has genuinely become hugely popular, even being described as a cult novel by one author and your individual view will not dent that.

But I agree with Ulysses G's comment a couple of posts up about how strange it is that opinions of books on Thaivisa swing so wildly between extremes.

Perhaps that's the consequence of the convention of anonymity which allows members to kick shit everywhere... which at least makes the forum colourfulI suppose.

Nonetheless different people will have different views of the same book and that's accepted by every author.

One man's meat etc! And it only needs a minority to like it to make it a bestseller.

For me the key to a novel is in the storytelling.

In my personal view John Burdett and Jake Needham are snappy writers but poor storytellers. Steve Leather is, he tells me, deliberately a plain writer but I think he's a great storyteller. I've read a lot of his UK based thrillers, not a genre I'd usually read, but I've found them totally gripping.

"I couldn't put it down," he said of "Thai Girl" (see inside the front dust jacket) and surely that's the key ingredient to a good read.

Andrew

PS Is it in poor taste to have a humble author on the forum discussing books?

Well put andrew.

I read your book and thought it was a plausable account of something that early could have happened to me . . .Im also English by the way !

The Hongkonger

[jazzbo]

IMHO Best Book by a major author based (in large part) in Thailand is Thai Horse by William Diehl (1924-2006)

[mahtin]

I remember a small boy borrowing a copy of Boulle's Bridge over the River Kwai from the public library.

Little did he then suspect...

[jazzbo]

from NY Times:

Dark Mysteries, Written From a Bright Beach (re: Colin Cotterill)

Published: September 6, 2010

The Gulf of Thailand meets the shoreline here in a series of palm- fringed crescents, some populated with

darkly tanned fishermen, others covered with little but sand and gently lapping waves...

http://www.nytimes.c...iht-cot.html?hp

[perkie173]

Books about whores?

What did y'all think about My Name Lon, You like me? I rather liked it.

I bought this in Phuket Airport for a flight back to Europe. It kept me completely engaged and sane through a 12 hour flight with no entertainment onboard. Left it there for my friend to read and then pass on.

[roamer]

Thai Food by David Thompson. Now that I can salivate over

If your prepared to cross borders then The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason is an excellent piece of work set in Burma during the colonial era.

[prometheus]

I am reading this novel, the first sci-fi I have seen basing in "future" Thailand, in a world where oil has ran out and food is power, "The Windup Girl"

http://www.amazon.com/Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/1597801585/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283901934&sr=1-1

[boblunch]

I enjoyed: The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill,The Windup Girl by Paolo Baciqalupi, and Breathing Water by Timothy Hallinan.

[hongkonger]

Sean Bunzick 'Air Thermae or Dangerous Junk for sale' and James Newman of 'BKK Express' fame - Any takers anyone? I havent read them either !

[hongkonger]

I enjoyed: The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill,The Windup Girl by Paolo Baciqalupi, and Breathing Water by Timothy Hallinan.

Waiting to get my hands on ' The Queen of Patpong' or the fiction version by Timothy Hallinan anyway . . .

[Lite Beer]

I have not checked back to see if this has already been mentioned but.

Anything written by Pira Canning Sudham.

Coming from Buriram his books are mostly concerned with the struggles of growing up in Isaan.

[hongkonger]

"Woman of Bangkok" (Reynolds) '50's shows that nothing changes.

Bits that stick, guy has paid bar and given few thousand baht to girl for joint trip. waiting for bus, she buys a 5 baht comb and asks him for the money, exasperated he say' "I just gave you x thousand baht!"

"That's MY money", she says.

He went to visit her in the back sois.."She lived in a cradle of noise"

His encounter with a policeman after a minor traffic accident, which did not really involve him.

................................................................................

..............................................

"Killing Smile", Christopher Moore..The good old days..the original Thermae.

The chapter about the juke box and the hierarchy of girls.

The guy who went back to USA and was asked if he fancied a plump 30 something.

Was on the next plane back..based on true character.

................................................................................

.............................

and of course, Stephen Leather "Private Dancer"

as mentioned should be required reading.

Hello Desertrat - I have heard mention of a book about the life of Jack Reynolds in the making? have you heard of a novel involving Reynolds 3 short stories called ' an Utter Shambles?'