Sightseeing

About this book

Sightseeing is a debut written by a young award-winning Thai-American writer. Set in contemporary Thailand these stories are generous radiant tales of family bonds youthful romance generational conflicts and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm Edenic setting. The stories in Sightseeing present a nation far removed from its exoticized stereotypes. In the prizewinning opening story "Farangs " the son of a beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girls American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood - a pet pig - swimming out to sea. In "Sightseeing " the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mothers impending blindness. The concluding novella "Cockfighter " is "an astonishing coming-of-ager" (Kirkus Reviews) in which a young girl witnesses her proud fathers valiant but foolhardy battle against a local delinquent whose familys vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.