The Blind Earthworm In The Labyrinth

Download or read book The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth written by Wīraphō̜n Nitipraphā and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tuned to the rhythms of the soap operas that air on Thai television each night and written with the consuming intensity of a fever dream, this novel opens an insightful and truly compelling window into the Thai heart.This is a melodrama about a ship-wrecked relationship. Set in Thailand and traveling loosely over the 1980s and '90s, with mention of a political incident in 2010, this sad and beautiful book begins on the day Chareeya is born, the same day her mother discovers her father having an affair with a traditional Thai dancer. From that moment on, Chareeya's life is bound to the weight of her parents' disappointments.She and her sister Chalika grow up in a lush, tranquil riverside town near the Thai capital of Bangkok, captivated by romance novels, classical music and games of make-believe. As children, the two develop a friendship with an orphaned boy, Pran. Over time these childhood friends find themselves lost between unrequited desires and fantastical dreams that are realer than their everyday lives. The culmination of the story comes as neither Chareeya, Chalika, nor Pran can exit safely from the intertwined labyrinth of their fates.The author's lyrical prose is enchanting: the book is filled with the colors, sounds and fragrances of Thailand. Her language has a hazy cinematic effect as characters maneuver through magical remembrances of events gone by, often failing to confront the problems in front of them.Dangerous and irresistible, the story can be read either as a nod to old-fashioned Thai romances, or as a sophisticated, literary upgrade of the soap opera drama, or as a bitter commentary on the myths, smokescreens and delusions that seem to have disoriented the Thai people with many years' heartbreak in attendance.The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth won the 2015 S.E.A. Award, Southeast Asia's most prestigious literary prize. It is now masterfully translated into English by Kong Rithdee, film critic and award-winning author in her own right.

Download or read book Bangkok Wakes to Rain written by Pitchaya Sudbanthad and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. 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. Not long after, a young woman 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 post-submergence Bangkok of the future, a band of savvy teenagers guides tourists and former residents past waterlogged, ruined landmarks, selling them tissues to wipe their tears for places they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by blood, memory, yearning, chance, and the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibian, ever-morphing city itself"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Minorities written by Suffian Hakim and published by Epigram Books. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the four misfits living in one HDB flat. One is a Malay–Jew who is trying to get his father to come back as a ghost. Cantona is a promising Bangladeshi artist on the run from a construction company. Tights is a Chinese illegal immigrant with a Forrest Gump obsession. And Shanti is a gifted Indian lab technician hiding from her abusive husband. When a forlorn pontianak begins haunting them, the four friends find themselves embroiled in a surreal showdown that may just upend the world, or at least Singapore. Written in Suffian Hakim's trademark humour, The Minorities is a novel about those living on the edges of society and their soulful bond.

Download or read book Paper Towns written by John Green and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quentin Jacobson has spent a lifetime loving Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all-nighter ends, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo has disappeared.

Download or read book Life and Times of Michael K written by J. M. Coetzee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From author of Waiting for the Barbarians and Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. In a South Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. This life affirming novel goes to the center of human experience—the need for an interior, spiritual life; for some connections to the world in which we live; and for purity of vision.

Download or read book Memories of the Memories of the Black written by NITIPRAPHA and published by . This book was released on 2022-03-14 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Sino-Chinese family find their destiny is inseparably entangled with that of the country they have adopted as a home. Not long before the Communist revolution, Tong, sent by his peasant-parents in impoverished rural China to work with a relative in Siam, has risen to become a rice-trading tycoon in Bangkok's Chinatown, married a former palace cook and built a large family in the town of Pad Riew. Haunted by the dream of returning to his true home in China, Tong, along with his wife and their five children, are swept along by the torrents of history as World War II breakout and China turns red, while the military strongman in Thailand act out the interminable cycle of power struggle, rebellion and coup d'état. Memories of the Memories of the Black Rose Cat, the award-winning second novel by Veerapon Nitiprapha, is a generations-spanning family saga that explores the roots of the Chinese diaspora in Siam and how the tragedy of ruined love, maternal betrayal and futile ambition shape the lives of Tong's clan members, each of them hounded by their own ghosts and burdened by their own sins. All of this is played out against the backdrop of Siam's mid-century social and political history, the most chaotic period the formation of the nation.

Download or read book Against Architecture written by Denis Hollier and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1992-02-25 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 30 years the writings of Georges Bataille have had a profound influence on French intellectual thought, informing the work of Foucault, Derrida, and Barthes, among others. Against Architecture offers the first serious interpretation of this challenging thinker, spelling out the profoundly original and radical nature of Bataille's work.