Review | Bangkok, capital of Thailand at the mercy of floods, brilliantly evoked in debut novel about its past and future
- The chapters, not just the waters, flow back and forth in time in expat Thai Pitchaya Sudbanthad’s dazzling debut novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain
- A grand house in the city is the backdrop to an exploration of the city’s relationship to water and its past, and imagines its future
Bangkok Wakes to Rain, by Pitchaya Sudbanthad, Riverhead, 4 stars
Bangkok Wakes to Rain should come with a mop. This teeming debut novel by Pitchaya Sudbanthad recreates the experience of living in Thailand’s aqueous climate so viscerally that readers will feel the water rising around their ankles.
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But Sudbanthad’s skills are more than just meteorological. A native of Thailand now living in New York, he captures the nation’s lush history in all its turbulence and resilience. Even the novel’s complex structure reflects Bangkok’s culture. The chapters flow back and forth in time, in ways that may leave readers initially grasping for solid ground.
The earliest sections involve an American doctor working for a Christian mission in 19th century Siam. He’s a reluctant volunteer, shocked by the primitive conditions and sceptical that these pagans will ever be brought to the light of science or God.
His first reaction is to plead for a transfer away from this quagmire. “The waterborne city inspirits our undoing,” he writes to his brother back in New England. “Its fluvial systems – the natural ones and also the mesh of canals throughout the capital – carry to us miasmata that weaken the body.”
His attitude towards the people is no less biased, dripping with the common racism of his time and station: “The Siamese as a race thrive in the aquatic realm,” he complains. “They live is if they have been born sea nymphs that only recently joined the race of man.”
