Monsoon Country by Pira Sudham Search Amazon for other books by or about Pira Sudham. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

Prem Surin comes from a village in the village of Napo in the poverty-stricken northeastern Thai region of Isaan. Initially considered to be mute because of his unwillingness to communicate, Prem is able to take up a scholarship thanks to the intervention of his kindly but somewhat naïve village primary school teacher Kumjai. Subsequently, following the author's real life experiences, Prem travels to Bangkok to take up studies at a school while living in a temple and working as a temple boy and unofficial tourist guide. Owing to his diligence and good fortune, he is then provided with a chance to study in the UK where he develops his knowledge and understanding of literature and becomes a poet of some promise.

However, this period – the 1970s – is one in which an awakening political consciousness in Thailand leads to a series of demonstrations against the military junta running the country. In 1973, Prem's friend Jit is killed by troops during what was intended to be a peaceful demonstration at Thammasat University; the violence also used to suppress a second demonstration in 1976 blights Prem's sense of purpose and, together with the sense of disorientation he feels as a result of culture clash, he loses interest in his studies and wanders aimlessly around Europe for a year or more until being obliged to return to Thailand.

This is the novel that earned Pira Sudham his nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature. As in others of his works, he writes in English, which is a language he is able to command with fluency and sensitivity but which acts as a barrier to understanding to the people about whom he is most often concerned. Pira is concerned with both the mental crippling that the effect of under-development and poverty has had on the Isaan people and the potentially negative impacts of development when it does arrive. The sections which describe village life and these agents of change are the best parts of the book and possess genuinely poetic power. His language is deceptively simple and in rhythm and tone reminiscent of the seasonality of peasant life. However, his journeys overseas lack much of this power. This is at least in part because of the opacity of much of the description of these parts. In Isaan, everything is clear and open; in Europe, we see events as though through a cracked mirror which hides or at least obscures vital parts of the action. What for examples occurs on the night that the composer von Regintz dies? Is Prem culpable? Does he finance his travels around Europe through acting in effect as a male prostitute? Where does Dhani get his money from – well, some of these questions are explored in the follow-up work but based on this single volume, this lack of clarity tends to irritate rather than tantalize. There is also the nature of Prem's sacrifice on his return to Napo, in which his western clothes, watch and other possessions are consigned to the flames rather than sold or given away, despite the urgent needs of the peasants who are hungry, sick and generally dispirited.

Despite the flaws, this is a major piece of work from a largely unknown writer who deserves an audience. More will be learnt of Thailand and of Isaan by reading this novel than from any number of guidebooks or picaresque tales of expatriates off the rails in Bangkok. Read this and you will never see the country in the same way again.