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.

Bangkok Days describes the marginal characters drifting through the city. Hot-humid days and nights, getting kicked out of the British Club, casual transactional sex, etc. Osborne, as an expatriate in Bangkok, describes the expat underclass and Thais acquaintances. There is not a lot of plot but plenty of atmosphere.

Sarah, a young American expatriate on the run, arrives in Bangkok with a suitcase full of stolen money. She hopes to find refuge in one of the once glamorous but now decaying luxury apartment buildings that dominate the Bangkok skyline. Sarah makes friends with the other residents of the glass kingdom, expats and Thais. At first the chaos, heat, and betrayal can be kept outside then it goes rapidly downhill. At the center of the book is Bangkok, the atmosphere and characters populating the city.

Ilyas is taken from his family by German colonial troops and, on returning years later, finds his parents gone and his sister Afiya missing. Hamza, sold into the army, returns seeking work and Afiya. Young men are forced into fighting in World War I, which brings devastation to East Africa. Eventually, they come back to their childhood homes.