Set across centuries and anchored in one house, this novel approaches Bangkok as a living system shaped by memory, politics, belief, and relentless change. Lives unfold and overlap: a nineteenth-century missionary seduced by Siam’s chaos, a postwar society woman facing an unexpected solitude, a jazz pianist negotiating ghosts both personal and spiritual, and future teenagers navigating a partially submerged city they never knew.
Critics have highlighted the book’s refusal of linear history, praising how its structure mirrors Bangkok itself—amphibious, recursive, and resistant to simplification. The city is not a backdrop but a force field, bending lives around it. Read this if you want to understand Bangkok from the inside, where time collapses and the past is never fully buried.
A 19th century missionary, comes to Siam, struggles and asks to be evacuated. A jazz musician is hired in the 1970s to play for ghosts in a sort of exorcism. A survivor of earlier student protests bleeds to death in the street. A plastic surgeon designs a new face for a girl to provide the identity of her desires. A woman is asked to prepare a final meal for a convicted notorious murderer. Can she perform such a humane act for someone who caused so much harm? The novel jumps across time and characters to a permanently flooded Bangkok of the future.
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