Showing 1 - 9 of 9
From Edo to Edinburgh
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 14/03/2026
» The opera based on the long and industrious life of Japanese print master Katsushika Hokusai had its world premiere in Glasgow and travelled to Edinburgh for two consecutive nights last month. I braved the strong winds of the Edinburgh evening to watch The Great Wave at the Festival Theatre on its last day.
Drowning in love
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 01/10/2021
» Not very often are the subjects of identity, race, racism told through a candid story of love. Open Water, a highly acclaimed novel by 27-year-old British-Ghanaian author Caleb Azumah Nelson is one of the few books that attempts to do just this, and with great effect.
Can a righteous resistance ever cross the line?
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/01/2021
» Sabotage, in French and in English, indicates the act of deliberately destroying or damaging property. It's an apparatus that aims at weakening an enemy or oppressor through means such as subversion and obstruction. It is a tool that, we are told, has been adopted by French workers as a substitute for strikes, but sabotage doesn't limit itself only to workplaces. Its literature survey connotes that it occurs within a variety of contexts -- in wars, political and social campaigns, or socio-economic programmes that effect someone's livelihood. In all cases, however, the intent of sabotage is analogous -- to use extreme civil disobedience to inflict damage upon goods or properties in order to serve a particular purpose or higher goal. The end justifies the means, according to the saboteurs.
A unity of none
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 17/04/2020
» In the morning of Aug 25, 2017, a group of militants belonging to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) unco-ordinatedly attacked police and border guards in northern Arakan (Rakhine) state, killing at least 12 officers. The Myanmar Armed Forces, known as the Tatmadaw, retaliated by launching a military counter-insurgency campaign in order to capture the perpetrators who attacked the border garrisons.
Magic in the mundane
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 02/08/2019
» Hailing from Chon Buri, Duanwad Pimwana is one of Thailand's best known fiction writers. Acclaimed for her imaginative takes on the realities of Thai society, Duanwad has authored numerous literary works, including novels, poetry, short stories and writings that mostly blend elements of magic with social realism that aim to highlight the socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind them. Bright, or Changsamran in Thai, Duanwad's first feature novel, won the prestigious SEA Write Award in 2003. By the time it was released in America last year, Bright was the first book by a Thai woman writer translated into English. The book is translated by Mui Poopoksakul, a Berlin-based translator who has done a remarkable job in translating the mundane into the magical.
The lives of others
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 07/06/2019
» Born in 1969 to a farming family in Chon Buri, Pimjai Juklin -- aka Duanwad Pimwana -- is one of Thailand's preeminent writers of contemporary fiction. After briefly working as a journalist, Duanwad started writing short stories. She was first published in 1989 in a local Thai magazine. In 2003, she published her first novel, Chang Samran (Bright), which won the SEA Write Award, making her one of only seven women writers to have won the prestigious award since its inception 40 years ago.
A shady underworld
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 03/05/2019
» We, The Survivors, the fourth novel by the Malaysian-British Tash Aw, is a compelling account of the life of a working-class lad named Lee Hock Lye, or known among friends as Ah Hock. It's a vivid tale of an imaginative young man with ideas of setting foot in a better place than a ramshackle village where livelihood depends on fishing and harvesting cockles from the polluted mudflats. Ah Hock isn't an angry young man, nor is he an idler who accepts whatever comes his way as fate. He tries hard with life, changing numbers of jobs to make ends meet, hoping one day he'd move to settle down with a house and family in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or even farther afield. The world that he inhabits, however, is a microcosm of the much larger equilibrium, where society permits a select few to climb the ladder, and the majority -- the ilk of Ah Hock -- remains stuck in poverty, leading a life that's going nowhere.
City of angels and demons
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 22/03/2019
» You can leave the place where you were born, but it never truly leaves you. It's always there, calling you home.
Overcoming the racial divide
Life, Sawarin Suwichakornpong, Published on 26/04/2018
» Shakespeare writes in The Winter's Tale that "there were no age between 10 and three-and-20, or that youth would sleep out the rest". Adolescence, or the marked "teenage years", encompass elements of biological growth and major social transformation, both of which are decidedly products of nature and culture. The time between youth and maturity can be sorrowful, hard, fun, sad and amazing. It never fails to inspire writers of fiction, to attempt to unravel the complexities of this concept of life. Charting into the unknown is always a favourite subject of those who write.