(Drivebycuriosity) - Bangkok is a fascinating metropolis. Lawrence Osborne wrote an elegy about Thailand`s capital: "Bangkok Days", published in 2009 (amazon). The author remembers the days when he lived the first time in the Thai metropolis around the year 2000.
Osborne, who belongs today to the rising stars of the British literature scene ("The Guardian" sees him as a successor to Graham Greene theguardian), was seemingly a drifter then, almost like a character in his later novels (hunters ). "I didn`t have a job, I was on the lam". Apparently he came to Bangkok to get a cheap dentist treatment and then stayed there for a while, living on a very low budget.
"Bangkok Days" shows a Bangkok most tourists won´t see and which is very different from the city I visited in the early 1990 (not only because the times had changed). It is a very intimate glance onto the metropolis, her citizens and visitors. He describes funny & strange episodes and portraits his fellow expatriates - called "farang s" in Thai - who are at least as exotic as Thailand`s capital.
"Bangkok Days" reads like a collection of short stories. I suspect that many parts of the book are fictional, some parts are even surreal. I enjoyed Osborne´s style and his precise and analytical descriptions & remarks. One of his acquaintances "had an air of upper-class twittery, with his polelike physique stripped of muscle and his linen whites which had missed their era by a wide mark". I got soaked into the book and immersed virtually deeply into a steamy & weird metropolis, a "pandemonious city (Sic)".
"Bangkok Day is a piece of ambitious literature - comparable to Knausgard`s celebrated writings - and a pleasure to read.
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