Book Review: BANGKOK WAKES TO RAIN by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Nothing true ever dies. Doesn't matter that the bullet holes have been filled and the walls painted over. Truth lingers, unseen like phantoms but there to rattle and scream wherever people try hardest to forget."

This is a patriot's tapestry of Bangkok's past, present and future.

Weaving together the cholera pandemic of the 1800's, the October uprisings in 1973 and 1976, the 2011 floods, and a very grim imagining of a future New Krungthep where Black Mirror meets Waterworld, Pitchaya Sudbanthad's love for his native Thailand is evident in the care that he took to illustrate every single detail. You can taste the tom yum goong and the hor mok, hear the hustle and bustle of the markets along the Chao Praya River.

Reading this book in the time of the 2020 pandemic made the chapter on the cholera pandemic hit differently. Reading this book in October, the month when the Massacre at Thammasat University as well as the 1973 popular uprising took place, makes the experience doubly poignant.

Sudbanthad's description of the terrible horrors the students faced makes this "farang" doubly horrified at the discovery that there was never any state official held accountable. And the fact that there are new student protests going on right now in Bangkok make one fearful, knowing that no one was punished for the abuses in the 1970's.

I was very much moved at the story of a mysterious but kind gentleman who befriended a Thai restaurant owner. It later turns out that he was the infamous Thanon Kittikachorn (given the name "Khun Chahtchai" in the novel). This examination of our common humanity across political, cultural and social divides is the over-all theme of this novel-length love letter to Bangkok.

Reading this book made me remember a trip to this beautiful land a few years ago. I suspect one reason why I enjoyed this book so much was because it made me remember sights and smells I so long to see and experience again, to be among some of the kindest and most welcoming people in a continent known for hospitality.

"There is only life, and there is meaningfulness inside it that can never be destroyed or again created... the machines must someday crumble into rusty mounds and water will leave the earth. This joy within her will always true."

Bangkok is a magical place, and this book is a loving tribute to it. Reading of its past only makes me want to go back and marvel anew at how this country became the only one in Southeast Asia to resist colonization, and to reflect on what lessons my country can learn from her.

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