Sightseeing

This book, by a 25-year-old Thai-American writer, marks the debut of a heart-stoppingly fresh new voice in world fiction.

The world described in 'Sightseeing' is gorgeous and lush, painful and candid. Rattawut paints a vivid picture of a Thailand far removed from its exotic reputation.

'Sightseeing' refuses to take the tourist routes or pay the farang prices at the market. In poignant, tough, heart-catching episodes, Rattawut Lapcharoensap takes his readers beneath the surface of Thailand to a place that is dynamic and corrupt, full of pride and passion and fear.

In these inter-generational stories of luck and loss, mother and son, Thai and tourist, healthy and sick are bound together. Sightseeing introduces its readers to the young boy and his brother speeding on a moped to the café Lovely, a brothel in Bangkok; Priscilla the Cambodian, a girl whose mouth is stuffed with the family fortune; a woman approaching blindness who barters for a last pair of sunglasses; and a pig called Clint Eastwood.

'Sightseeing' reveals, slowly and powerfully, that no place is too far away from home when it comes to pain, anger, love, or hurt. It explores through confident and unforgettable storytelling what it means to be a son, a brother, a parent, a lover, a Thai - and a disenfranchised resident of the global village.