“An important, ambitious, and accomplished novel.”

— Mohsin Hamid on Bangkok Wakes to Rain

U.S. cover of the novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain, featuring vertical green stripes veiling the image of a Thai green parrot
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New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Washington Post Notable Book of the Year
Kirkus Reviews Best Books

Lurching through decades, from Bangkok’s rich past to its precarious future, the human tales in this novel seep into one another, held together by delicate threads. Read more…


Available wherever book are sold

US: Penguin Random House — Riverhead Books
Apple Book / Barnes & Noble / Books-A-Million / Bookshop / Indiebound / Powell’s / PRH
English-language audiobook (via a local bookstore): Libro.fm

UK: Hachette — Sceptre
 Hodder / Waterstones / WH Smiths

Translations:
France: Editions Rivages (translator: Bernard Turle)
Italy: Fazi Editore (translator: Silvia Castoldi)

 

  • “…a bold and tender novel…Sudbanthad arrives to us already a masterful innovator of the form—a startlingly original debut.”

    —Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh
    and The Queen of the Night

  • “…Sudbanthad so compellingly captures not only the long arcs of these lives—but also the smallest moments, and how those moments linger in memory, how they haunt.”

    —Karen Thompson Walker, author of
    The Dreamers and The Age of Miracles

  • “Gorgeously polyphonic and saturated in the senses, Bangkok Wakes to Rain brims with a wistful and gripping energy. Sudbanthad carries us through time and space with a magician’s hand, with a visionary’s eye…”

    —Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Gold Fame Citrus

  • “Sudbanthad’s beautiful, ambitious first novel moves with an elegant restlessness that seems to match the city’s own.”

    —Rajesh Parameswaran, author of I Am an Executioner

Events

April 21, 2022
Hartford, CT
Trinity College A.K. Smith Scholar Series 
“Earth Stories: Writing Climate Change” panel with Chantal Bilodeau, Amy Brady, Martin Espada; workshop: “The Narrative Shape of Things to Come”
Time: 430pm

May 9, 2022
Brooklyn, NY
BBC World Book Café 
w/ Elaine Hsieh Chou, Crystal Hannah Kim, Jen Lue, Matt Ortile, and presenter Michelle Fleury
Time: 700pm

June 22, 2022
Virtual event
Point Reyes Books
w/ Amy Brady, Tajja Issen, and Lidia Yuknavitch for The World As We Knew It (anthology)
7pm

August 13, 2022
Long Island City, NY
Artbook MOMA PS1
“Six Endings” reading
3pm

September 27, 2022
Brooklyn Book Festival
Center for Fiction event
“Environmental Storytelling” with Kerri Arsenault, Bathsheba Demuth, Morgan Talty
6pm

See all events

“This teeming debut novel…recreates the experience of living in Thailand’s aqueous climate so viscerally that you can feel the water rising around your ankles.”
—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Fluid in its structure and aqueous in its themes, the novel vividly evokes the teeming, sweltering city…”
—The New Yorker

“Ambitious and sweeping, yet at once intimately crafted and shot through with fine detail, Bangkok Wakes to Rain is a sumptuous accomplishment.”
—Angela Ledgerwood, Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

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© Pitchaya Sudbanthad 2022