Background

About the Author

By D.A. Housman

Living and writing in Esarn, Thailand’s arid north eastern region, 400 kilometres from Bangkok, Pira Canning Sudham has been firmly established as one of Thailand’s best known writers. Yet to call Pira Canning Sudham simply a Thai novelist would be misleading. It is true that he is indeed a Thai citizen, and he would be the last to deny his close relationship with, and affection for, this beautiful kingdom. Sudham is more than that. His first language is Lao – the language of the great majority of Thailand’s Esarn people, to whom he owes his origin, inspiration, and to whom he now devotes much of his energies and time. Nevertheless, it would also be an over simplification to call Pira Canning Sudham a Thai-Lao or Esarn novelist, for there is a third, clearly perceptible strand in his writings, originating in his 30-year odyssey through New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. As a result of these lengthy and torturous sojourns. It began when he won a Colombo Plan Scholarship to read English Literature Auckland University and at Victoria University, in New Zealand. The young student developed an enduring affection for the English language. Those familiar with Pira Canning Sudham’s writing, as well as those who know the author himself will recognize that his love for literature and cultural tradition is profound, enduring, and perhaps second only to his love for his native Esarn region.

It is this unusual combination of talents and affections which make him so much more than a purely Thai novelist for he writes in English rather than in Thai. He explains this, in part, by acknowledging that he is happier and more confident writing in English, recognizing its status as the international lingua franca, and thus employing it remarkably well as a vehicle to bring his beloved Esarn to wider international attention. Deceptively simple, Sudham’s direct, clear prose amazingly has poetic quality. Prof. Dr John R. Lyon-Bowes Bernard, Professor of Linguistics at Macquarie University, puts it: "Apart from his unexpected choice of English to write in and his cosmopolitan culture, there is another, a third, unusual aspect which intrigues me most of all. This is Pira Canning Sudham’s actual way with words. It is like that of no other writer I know. If ever there was a writer whose every word was chosen and placed with careful deliberation, it is this one. Every word, plain or purple, is just what he intended it to be and creates the effect he calculated for it. The feeling that his prose is simple, except in the most superficial sense, will be overtaken by a realisation that it is both sophisticated and complex."

In Monsoon Country, the author builds on style and characterization of his two earlier works, People of Esarn and Tales of Thailand. Yet Monsoon Country presents a broader canvas than he has previously attempted. "Monsoon Country is an operation theatre for me," said Sudham. "And my scalpels have been keenly sharpened. In the sixties when I began writing Monsoon Country, not many Thais dare to bring out in the open the vital issue of rampant corruption, which, to my mind, is cancerous and destructive. Though it is universal and incurable, it can be arrested. Due to apathy of the authorities and general public towards this pernicious illness, I see Thailand then and even more so now, like a tree, rotten to the core, falls of its own accord. The July 1997 economic crisis, which is lengthening to the present and farther into the future, is merely a rash. The fall is yet to happen unless we heed the warning, arrest corruption and change our attitude towards it so that we do not accept it as a way of life."

Asked whether he writes in fear, Pira Canning Sudham replies: "Yes and no. My name Pira means courage and I don’t want to be a coward. But to write without fear in this situation one has to deploy all sorts of disguises as well as refinement. By refinement I mean refining not only words, phrases and the way one uses them, but also sentiments. Raw anger has to be crystallized by both time and the Lord Buddha’s teaching. We can say the same thing in so many different ways — crudely, angrily, directly, tactfully, euphemistically, or skillfully hiding messages between the lines. I have no British police force to safeguard my life like Salman Rushdie so I have to be extremely prudent as well as crafty, especially when over a hundred Thai writers, labour leaders, environmentalists and idealistic schoolteachers have already been murdered by hired gunmen."

Then, why write? Is it worth one’s life? The author ponders: "Apart from having a good set of scalpels, I have an axe to grind. I’m much driven by certain force. And as if having been impregnated, I carried an embryo of a novel in my head. Like a woman carrying a foetus in the womb, I had to give birth to a book the best possible way so that people in villages of Esarn, so far removed from other peoples because of distance and poverty, living the life of the damned, to be born, suffer, exploited, swindled, despised, bullied, forced to leave their homes and farmlands for dam constructions and for eucalyptus planting, or completely ignored, and then die in vain. They are my driving force and a source of energy so that I can speak on their behalf, write about them and thus build their monuments.

D.A. Housman