Tew Bunnag, After the Wave, 2005

Tew Bunnag is a relatively new author on the Thai scene, and this collection of six stories are all centred around the 2004 tsunami which devastated Thailand’s west coast. As mostly stories of ordinary people whose lives are disrupted by that extraordinary event, this being Thailand it’s perhaps inevitable that ghosts also make an appearance as a thread that Bunnag uses to subtly link several of the stories: this was the side to his writing that I found the most enjoyable – how the tsunami somehow also became intertwined with the lives of Thailand’s ghosts; also his frequent references to the sea-gypsies known as the Moken whom Bunnag clearly knows quite well. A good collection that’s impossible to find in bookstores outside Thailand but is available from the small press Mettavisions.  PY

MORE ON TEW BUNNAG :  INTERVIEW WITH BK MAGAZINE