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In 2004 a journalist reported that two magnificent English country houses had become properties of a "wild man from Asia." The article created waves of diverse responses due to the nature of the claim as well as the background of the new owner, a son of impoverished peasants from the mud and mire of the East.

Prem Surin, the new owner of Warleigh Manor and Ashdown Hall, reportedly stated: "Ashdown Hall has been our family seat for centuries. I am destined to return and protect it from falling into wrong hands. It is beyond me to prevent Siam from the take-over but Ashdown Hall must not go the same way while it is within my power to protect it. As for Warleigh Manor, the previous owner, Charles Tregonning, pinched my spoons when he was my butler in the other life. In this life he merely gave back what had been mine plus interest at the rate of 13 per cent APR – whatever that is – which the Lord has kept the account, counting from an actual time of pilferage up to now which would be 135 years."

Pira Canning Sudham takes a different approach. Craftily he explores dark caverns, mysterious avenues and perilous highways and byways that lead to the take-over not only of England’s treasure troves but also of a shadowed land named "Siam."

Sudham delves deep into the morass as opposed to the journalist’s muckraking technique. Eventually he comes up with riveting accounts of the massacres of pro-democracy protesters, the murders of idealistic and courageous teachers, a pernicious plot code-named DDT, corruptive forces and shadowy worlds of graft, sex trade, drug trafficking and various forms of corruption. But Sudham deftly deals with such stark and gross matters with poetical narrative that has become one of the most remarkable writings of contemporary literature. That is understandable for he is primarily a poet.

The exploration has been Pira Canning Sudham’s work of a lifetime, covering fifty years of social, political changes occurred in Thailand since 1955. In his thirties, Sudham worked on the first book of Shadowed Country and published it in 1988 under of title of Monsoon Country. The saga continued. In 2002 The Force of Karma, a sequel to Monsoon Country, appeared separately. To combine the prequel and its sequel, Sudham extensively revised and expanded them so that the two works match seamlessly.

"The Force of Karma was penned in my late fifties after having lived a writer’s life in England for over a decade," Sudham said. "Though I wanted to adhere to that clear, crisp and direct prose, which many readers of Monsoon Country considered daunting, it would be pretentious for an aging wordsmith like me to continue in the same vein. Hence, I extensively revised both books, taking the opportunity to weave in some new yarns so as to enrich further the whole tapestry. To my mind Monsoon Country is now at the same par with its sequel, The Force of Karma."

Pira Canning Sudham’s Shadowed Country is available at all good bookstores or can be ordered online direct from DCO Books in Bangkok for immediate shipment worldwide.

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Pira Canning Sudham’s novel The Force of Karma, which is a sequel to Monsoon Country, brings the saga to a riveting and provocative pitch as the plot pulls into the cauldron most of the leading characters featured in Monsoon Country.

They include the Esarn pauper, Prem Surin, the bibulous billionaire Dani Pilakul, the winsome University of London graduate Elizabeth Durham, the grandee of the old school British art dealer Charles Tregonning and the famous German conductor Wilhelm Hagenbach.

In The Force of Karma, two new characters are introduced – the versatile hotelier Karl Wittenberg and the ambitious army officer Ayumongkol Mongkolkunthorn. Their fellowship, the Operation Norma, the damaged ecology, the inheritance, the sinister allegations of drug trading and the force of destiny have been intricately woven.

Pira Canning Sudham’s The Force of Karma is available at all good bookstores or can be ordered online direct from DCO Books in Bangkok for immediate shipment worldwide.

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Pira Canning Sudham’s novel Monsoon Country is set in Thailand, England and Germany to convey the cultural tension between the East and the West, the clashes between the new powers and the old values, covering the span of 25 years of the socio-economic and political changes occurring in Thailand.

"Pira Canning Sudham is the kind of writer who is invaluable to a country like Thailand. He is a writer who believes in development but not revolution, social justice but not communism, and who has learned that not all the Westernization in the world can take from a good man his responsibility to his own people."

South China Morning Post

Pira Canning Sudham’s Monsoon Country is available at all good bookstores or can be ordered online direct from DCO Books in Bangkok for immediate shipment worldwide.

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With the skill and craftmanship of a sensitive writer, Pira Canning Sudham conveys the inner voices of his subjects regardless of how illiterate, timid and insignificant they seem in their daily lives. Their simplicity and sensitivity come through his direct and clear prose, yet moving and touching. He writes with understanding and compassion for his people.

"Foreign writers writing about the Thai people look at Thailand from the outside, but Pira Canning Sudham writes about his people and country as seen from the inside. This is one of the things that makes them so fascinating."

Professor Walter G. Langlois

Pira Canning Sudham’s People of Esarn is available at all good bookstores or can be ordered online direct from DCO Books in Bangkok for immediate shipment worldwide.

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Out of the relocation of millions of people in the path of dam constructions and eucalyptus plantations, the suppression of wages and the price of agricultural produce, the forceful drive to gain more land to grow eucalyptus trees, the corruption, prostitution, child trade, slave labour, the horror of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway during the World War II, the economic crisis in July 1997, the war to win the people in impoverished Esarn in the seventies and the daily grind in the Mother of Gridlock - Bangkok - come tales of hope and tales of woe, tales of acceptance and tales of the struggle for survival that become Tales of Thailand, a book by Pira Canning Sudham.

Pira Canning Sudham’s Tales of Thailand is available at all good bookstores or can be ordered online direct from DCO Books in Bangkok for immediate shipment worldwide.

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Chiang Mai:

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Pattaya:

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