Recently I met Emma Larkin, the author of Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell In A Burmese Teashop. It’s a great book, a superb exploration of modern day Myanmar that describes the everyday joys of the country as well as the political and economic destruction wrought upon it by the Orwellian military regime. Larkin’s exploration of the country as she traces Orwell’s footsteps gives an eyewitness account of what has befallen the country but also the enduring optimism of those she meets within it. Perhaps most importantly, Secret Histories breaks the mould of how Burma is discussed: usually any mention of the country doesn’t get beyond the atrocities perpetrated by the government, but wholly neglects the history and culture of the country, and the people themselves. Larkin’s book doesn’t bypass the gravity of its political situation, but equally she doesn’t let Burma remain wholly in its shadow either.
By contrast, Thailand seems to have a never-ending stream of books that remain solidly in the same genre. They are J.G Ballard’s notion of “invisible literature” for South East Asia: you’ll probably not find them on Amazon or see them on shelves in Europe, but walk into any branch of Asia Books here and you’ll see whole rows of Bangkok-based fiction and memoirs written by Westerners that inevitably revolve around the illicit delights of Bangkok’s notorious nightlife. The GoGo Dancer Who Stole My Viagra and Other Poetic Tragedies of Thailand is the latest addition to the canon: I think you can get the gist from the title.
These books are designed to titillate and trade on Thailand’s nefarious reputation but they rarely manage to capture the absolute sexual depravity that undeniably goes on within the city. They conform to the usual thriller genre guidelines – for all the promises of the book covers, you’re unlikely to find startlingly adventurous pornography amongst their pages. There much more the prose equivalent of Murray Head’s One Night In Bangkok – and that, of course, is something to be avoided.
More seriously, these thrillers dominate the fiction written about Thailand – and as Emma and I talked, off the top of our heads we couldn’t think of a great book written about Thailand. (Alex Garland’s The Beach isn’t really about Thailand – it’s about a bunch of stoners getting in way over their heads). Instead the easy sex caricatures and stereotypes that make up most of the literature about Thailand remain in place as the dominant image of the country, simply because nothing else has come along to reshape perceptions. (Although, having said all that, Very Thai could go a long way to change that).
More on Thailand:
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