{"id":1095,"date":"2019-04-15T09:43:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cals.wpengine.com\/arkansasliteraryfestival-org\/blog\/arkansas-literary-festival-pitchaya-sudbanthad\/"},"modified":"2019-04-15T09:43:23","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:43:23","slug":"arkansas-literary-festival-pitchaya-sudbanthad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cals.org\/six-bridges-book-festival\/blog\/arkansas-literary-festival-pitchaya-sudbanthad\/","title":{"rendered":"Arkansas Literary Festival: Pitchaya Sudbanthad"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Globe-traveling Novelist Explores Home in Bangkok Wakes to Rain<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

\"\"\u00a0<\/strong>Pitchaya Sudbanthad\u2019s debut novel is a multi-layered meditation on place and the idea of home, based on the shifting faces of the city of Bangkok over many decades. Bangkok Wakes To Rain<\/em> is peopled with many characters and interweaves plotlines across decades, including the 19th<\/sup> century, the 1970s, and even an imagined future in which most of the city is underwater as a result of climate change.<\/p>\n

Sudbanthad\u2019s elegant and absorbing prose conjures the city vividly, and the sensory delights of immersion in Bangkok are undoubtedly one of the novel\u2019s pleasures. But the real story that drives the novel is a deep longing for a home, and how time, geography and memory play strange games with one\u2019s sense of home and belonging.<\/p>\n

Seeking roots in an ever-shifting landscape<\/h4>\n

An interest in the idea of home and roots seems natural for Sudbanthad given that he spent his youth traveling between three continents.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father is an internationally trained architect, and my family moved around the world for his projects,\u201d Sudbanthad said. In addition to living in Bangkok and Saudi Arabia, he also spent time in the southern United States in Florida and North Carolina. \u201cWhen the weather got hot and humid,\u201d he said of his life in the southern states, \u201cif I closed my eyes, I could be reminded of Bangkok, complete with the buzzing of mosquitoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sudbanthad\u2019s experience of not having a single culture and place to call home reflects the world of the twenty-first century for many people. As the author ably demonstrates with his lyrical portrait of Bangkok, the places we call home are often so drastically changed by technological progress and the loss of cultural memory that lifelong residents can struggle with the same sense of dislocation as wanderers.<\/p>\n

\"\"Spirits linger even as technology advances<\/h4>\n

The resonance of Sudbanthad\u2019s novel stems from the persistence of the old alongside the new, the \u201cghosts\u201d that appear both in traditional Thai beliefs about spirits and as ghostly remnants of the past in the city. The Sino-Colonial house at the center of the novel ends up surviving only as the fa\u00e7ade of the base of a condominium building. Then there are the ghosts of the dead, deceased characters who remain present in the novel\u2019s nonlinear time and in the minds of the living, even as they are forgotten by history. Thematically, these ghosts pull together the narrative in many symbolic ways, and the subtlety and depth of the layering is another masterful touch especially impressive for this debut novelist.<\/p>\n

Sudbanthad\u2019s cool style, third person omniscient, is nonetheless emotionally compelling in addition to beautifully styled. His choice of the more objective tone of this point-of-view came from the story\u2019s needs. \u201cI have written close POVs elsewhere,\u201d he said, \u201cbut with so many characters and arcs in my novel, I think a closer voice would have resulted in lots of cacophonous noise. For me, it\u2019s up to what\u2019s best for the work at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

A talent for dimensional female characters<\/h4>\n

Refreshingly, Sudbanthad\u2019s numerous female characters are three-dimensional and well-drawn. It is perhaps the ultimate compliment that an unknowing reader given this novel without a name attached might not be able to guess the gender of the author. In a novel of this scope, this talent for developing character across gender lines is crucial to the story\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

Pitchaya Sudbanthad appears to have a long and fruitful career ahead of him, with unusual demonstrated talent and an impressive debut that has been compared to the work of David Mitchell. Yet there isn\u2019t much biographical information online: his official biographies are sparing in their details. When asked about any other subjects of study that he has pursued besides writing, he referred to interests as wide as his travels.<\/p>\n

For me, a book is necessarily outside of a writer, just beyond grasp.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cMy writing is perhaps a narrative manifestation of my myriad curiosities,\u201d he said. \u201cI formally studied environmental sciences and policy, as well as economics, and I also briefly worked with and studied biological sciences and studio art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he will give out a few facts about his past and his current life, Sudbanthad also believes in preserving some silence in a writer\u2019s biography because of the freedom that silence allows to readers when they encounter a book.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want my personal story to obstruct any reader\u2019s view of my book,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, a book is necessarily outside of a writer, just beyond grasp. Yet we keep on trying by way of writing, and then we must let readers have their turn.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pitchaya Sudbanthad<\/strong> has received fellowships in fiction writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony, and currently splits time between Bangkok and Brooklyn. His debut novel is Bangkok Wakes to Rain<\/em>, published by Riverhead Books in February 2019. Sudbanthad bends the rules of the traditional novel as he creates and continually re-shapes with daring imagination the story of one house\u2014and the many characters who pass through it\u2014in Thailand\u2019s capital city. Bangkok Wakes to Rain<\/em> is a boldly inventive first novel that masterfully blends history, fable, and the futuristic to bring into striking relief a place at once steeped in age-old customs and constantly on the front lines of political, environmental, and cultural change. Sudbanthad will appear at the Arkansas Literary Festival<\/a> on Saturday, April 27. For a schedule, see here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Globe-traveling Novelist Explores Home in Bangkok Wakes to Rain<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Pitchaya Sudbanthad\u2019s debut novel is a multi-layered meditation on place and the idea of home, based on the shifting faces of the city of Bangkok over many decades. Bangkok Wakes To Rain<\/em> is peopled with many characters and interweaves plotlines across decades,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":1096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nArkansas Literary Festival: Pitchaya Sudbanthad - Six Bridges Book Festival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cals.org\/six-bridges-book-festival\/blog\/arkansas-literary-festival-pitchaya-sudbanthad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Arkansas Literary Festival: Pitchaya Sudbanthad\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Globe-traveling Novelist Explores Home in Bangkok Wakes to Rain \u00a0Pitchaya Sudbanthad\u2019s debut novel is a multi-layered meditation on place and the idea of home, based on the shifting faces of the city of Bangkok over many decades. 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