sightseeing

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 intergenerational 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 Cafe Lovely, a brothel in Bankok; 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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago, raised in Bangkok, and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was educated at Triamudomsuksa Pattanakan, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan, where he received an MFA in Creative Writing. He is currently David T.K. Fellow in the School of American Studies at the University of East Anglia where he is working on his first novel. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.