Thai author Tew Bunnag’s work with the dying helped him write his latest novel
Adrienne Loftus Parkins and Thai author Tew Bunnag at Asia House
Thai author Tew Bunnag’s work with the dying helped him write his latest novel
30 May 2014
Curtain of Rain is Tew Bunnag’s fourth novel, and the first to be published in the UK. It opens in Bangkok during the floods of 2011, then moves between past and present and across geographical time-zones.
The main protagonists, a Thai writer and his British editor, are both suffering from terminal illnesses. Tarrin Wandee, the writer, has cancer and Clare Stone, the editor, is succumbing gradually to Alzheimer’s disease. But don’t let that put you off. This is a novel about the tensions between what Thailand was and what it is becoming – a dialectic between these two worlds, between traditional values and modernity.
“I didn’t set out with a mission,” Bunnag said, in conversation with Adrienne Loftus Parkins, director of the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival. “I work in an area that is affected by these issues.”
A Tai Chi master and meditation teacher, Bunnag divides his time between Spain and Thailand, where he works with the dying and the bereaved. Brought up in England, Bunnag said he has always felt like an “extra-terrestrial”, and that his sense of “being inside and being able to stand back” is an obvious advantage for a writer.
The book contains a story within a story. As the lines between fiction and reality blur, Tarrin Wandee’s writings dovetail with events in the lives of those around him. Bunnag said that his intention for the character was that he would recover the sense that storytelling will always be valid.
The relationship between Tarrin and Clare, between the author and the editor, involves a recovered memory, a truth that is revealed through fiction.
“Sometimes,” Bunnag said, “in order to forget you have to remember.”
Bunnag spoke during an Extra Words session at the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival before Peter Popham spoke about his biography on Aung ung San Suu Kyi.
To listen to the audio of the event click below:-
To watch a video clip of the event click below:-
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Sue Lanzon is a volunteer at the Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival. Her first collection of short stories, Something In The Water & Other Tales Of Homeopathy, is published by Winter Press.
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