Her nose picks up the ashen smell always in the air. A pearl-eyed lottery seller, sensing passersby from footsteps and the clap of flip-flops, calls out over an opened case of clothes-pinned tickets to whoever craves luck. In their trail, sparrows tussle over fallen fried crumbs and biscuit sticks trampled to powder by little shoes. They don't take notice of her they have screens in their hands, shoves and teasing to repay, snacks bagged in newsprint to grease up their fingers. The last few children in blue-and-white uniforms have finished their after-school work and are plodding along in small gangs or, like her, alone. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Īlways, she arrives near evening. Bangkok Wakes to Rain is an elegy for what time erases and a love song to all that persists, yearning, into the unknowable future.

Time collapses as these lives collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself. And in a New Krungthep yet to come, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember. In the present, a young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the house's resident spirits. A post-World War II society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting her solitary fate. 'Important, ambitious, and accomplished.' -Mohsin Hamid, New York Times bestselling author of Exit WestĪ missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam.

'Recreates the experience of living in Thailand's aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles.'-Ron Charles, Washington Post

Bangkok wakes to rain a novel