The British author and cultural chronicler Philip Cornwel-Smith has called Bangkok his home for a quarter century, and his book “Very Thai,” published in 2005, has become the standard go-to work for inquiries on all aspects of popular Thai culture. Now, his follow-up “Very Bangkok,” a 350-page ode of love to the city published just before COVID-19 made international travel impossible, has become the face of Thailand in an international exhibition devoted to global cities.
In sections entitled “Senses,” “Heart” and “Face,” Cornwel-Smith’s new book explores and explains myriad urban tales, myths, facts and contradictions that make up the personality of the Thai capital, accompanied by the author’s vivid color photographs. No foreign or Thai writer has published a book that comes close to providing as erudite and intimate portrait of the capital.
This pioneering insight into contemporary Thai folk culture delves beyond the traditional Thai icons to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle. From floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in a bag, the same exquisite care, craft and improvisation resounds through home and street, bar and wardrobe. Never colonised, Thai culture retains nuanced ancient meaning in the most mundane things. The days are colour coded, lucky numbers dictate prices, window grilles become guardian angels, tattoos entrance the wearer. Philip Cornwel-Smith scoured each region to show how indigenous wisdom both…
This collection of short stories, set between 1980 and 2016, portrays the lives of a handful of recurring characters, and while anyone with a vague knowledge of Thailand will recognize the cultural tropes typically associated with the country, the world offered by Nardone, who is Thai American, is one that is largely hidden from outsiders. Western readers are likely to be surprised by the chasm between the well-established Thai stereotypes of beach holidays, spicy food and raucous nightlife and the tough realities of daily life in the country. As the buildings in old cowboy movies are merely assemblies of two-dimensional exteriors, cultural and political symbols that form the basis for the country’s image abroad, turn out to be substitutes for very different realities that play out behind the freshly painted facades put up for tourists. Both the characters and readers are entrapped between two opposite realities, unable to commit to either.
Bangkok, 1980. As the decades pass, figures fall in and out of the relentless city: Pea and Nam, who arrive in search of a better life; a Thai Elvis impersonator and his only daughter, Pinky; Benz, Tintin and Big, a brotherhood of orphaned strayboys; Rick, the white American patriarch who abandons his Thai family when the going gets tough; Hasmah, whose bloody, hidden work is driven by secessionist rage. Sex tourism, Buddhist cults, gambling rings and skin-whitening routines threaten to take over a city reeling from financial crisis - in a nation constantly reinventing itself, anything can happen...
As in other countries, graffiti producers in Thailand generally remain on the fringes of the art world, where many say they belong if they are to have authenticity and impact. But last year’s inclusion of Thai outsider artist Peerachai Patanapornchai in the Bangkok Art Biennale, which also featured mainstream art icons such as Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramović, indicates that visual street culture is finding traction in mainstream popular culture. Peerachai is interviewed at length in “Bangkok Street Art and Graffiti,” by Rupert Mann. In 2013, Mann had stumbled upon the remnants of The Bangkok Elevated Road and Train System, commonly known as the Hopewell project after its main contractor, an ill-fated attempt to construct a railway mass transit system in Thailand. In 1990, Mann writes, Hong Kong Tycoon Gordon Wu was awarded a contract to build both a road and a railway above existing State Rail Transport lines. Work on the project’s northern section between Chatuchak Market and Don Mueang Airport ground to a halt during the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. In 2013, removal of the pillars began. Mann’s images of the Hopewell columns offer a plethora of styles, characters and messages, both overt and covert, and are bundled between essays peppered with interviews that address the history of street art and graffiti from its origins in the U.S. and Europe to its decade-long rise in Thailand, where the medium has evolved from tagging and lettering to the character-based imagery which dominates Bangkok’s walls today.
Documenting an alternative history and social commentary by Bangkok's graffiti and street artists, this insightful and thought-provoking book offers fresh insight into Thai subcultures. Not given a platform elsewhere, street art and graffiti gives artists the opportunity to protest the social injustices they encounter. Through their art, they speak out against dictators and the political elite, as well as the extensive gentrification sweeping Bangkok. In addition, this book is the only visual record of (what was sarcastically named) "Thailand's Stonehenge": standing pillars covered in graffiti along the abandoned Hopewell elevated rail line that was supposed to link the city to…
Becker is a British traveler in trouble. Madhurima is a rising star police officer. In these three explosive tales, the two join forces to investigate the city’s crooked high society.
On the way, they take on deluded would-be messiahs in search of Mother Teresa’s stolen millions, encounter fanatics, circus freaks and cannibals, fall in and out of love and pay homage to one of the world’s most beautiful and toughest cities.
Amidst passion, murder and mayhem, is there room for two lovers driven by justice and compassion?
Tom Vater's 'Kolkata Noir' is a riveting crime fiction cycle of three novellas set in the past, the present and the future.
