Welcome Me to the Kingdom

Mai Nardone

From Shelf: New in Health and Lifestyle, April 24

An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth century Bangkok, Welcome Me to the Kingdom tells the story of three families striving to control their own destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.

Bangkok, 1980. As the decades pass, figures fall in and out of the relentless city: Pea and Nam, who arrive in search of a better life; a Thai Elvis impersonator and his only daughter, Pinky; Benz, Tintin and Big, a brotherhood of orphaned strayboys; Rick, the white American patriarch who abandons his Thai family when the going gets tough; Hasmah, whose bloody, hidden work is driven by secessionist rage. Sex tourism, Buddhist cults, gambling rings and skin-whitening routines threaten to take over a city reeling from financial crisis - in a nation constantly reinventing itself, anything can happen...