In thirteen stories that investigate ordinary and working-class Thailand, characters aspire for more but remain suspended in routine. They bide their time, waiting for an extraordinary event to end their stasis. A politician's wife imagines her life had her husband's accident been fatal, a man on death row requests that a friend clear up a misunderstanding with a sex worker, and an elevator attendant feels himself wasting away while trapped, immobile, at his station all day.

With curious wit, this collection offers revelatory insight and subtle critique, exploring class, gender, and disenchantment in a changing country.

About the Author

Duanwad Pimwana (b. 1969) is consistently regarded as an important female voice in contemporary Thai literature. She won the S.E.A. Write Award, Southeast Asia's most prestigious literary prize, in 2003 for her novel Changsamran, and is one of only six women to have won the Thai section of the award. Born to farmer parents, Pimwana attended a vocational school and started off as a journalist at a local newspaper. She published her first short story at the age of twenty and quickly gained recognition, earning awards from PEN International Thailand and the acclaimed Thai literary magazine Chorkaraket. Known for fusing touches of magic realism with social realism, she has written nine books. English translations of her work have appeared in Words Without Borders and Asymptote's Translation Tuesday column. The author currently lives in her native seaside province of Chonburi, located on the Thai east coast.

Mui Poopoksakul is a lawyer-turned-translator with a special interest in contemporary Thai literature. Her first book-length translation The Sad Part Was (Tilted Axis Press 2017), a short story collection by Prabda Yoon, won a PEN Translates award. She also translated Moving Parts, another collection by Prabda Yoon for Tilted Axis. Her work has also appeared in various literary journals, including Two Lines, Asymptote, The Quarterly Conversation, and In Other Words. She studied literature as an undergraduate at Harvard College, and holds an MA in cultural translation from the American University of Paris. A native of Bangkok, she currently resides in Berlin.

Reviews

"Incisive. . . . The petty concerns of [the characters'] daily lives-frustrated careers, infidelity, reconnecting with distant family- are hypnotically rendered in Pimwana's telling. This is an exciting debut." - Publishers Weekly

"Earthy, spare stories that paint a bleak portrait of human shortcomings." - Kirkus Reviews

"Cleverly exposes the torment of imposed gender roles and their sprawling effect on characters' psyches." - The New York Times

"Each of her stories poses its own moral challenge, pleasurable and unsettling at once. Taken together, they are a phenomenal puzzle to read." - NPR

"Arid Dreams is stark, sly, and unsparingly brilliant. Here is a writer unafraid to pick up the scalpel of her prose and use it to cut to the bone. Each story is more compelling than the last, each combines dark humor with deeper truths about human desire and depravity. I couldn't look away." - Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young

Awards
Long-listed for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021 (UK).



Book Information
ISBN 9781911284406
Author Duanwad Pimwana
Format Paperback
Imprint Tilted Axis Press
Publisher Tilted Axis Press