Comrade Aeon’s Field Guide to Bangkok might be the perfect book for the summer season – dense with characters, mixing the remnants of the former tropical jungle left in the concrete jungle of Bangkok, full of heat, puzzles from the past and intersecting narratives, but at the same time – decidedly light in tone (despite the serious plots).
Among the characters whose stories we follow, there are both rich and slum dwellers. A certain undeveloped piece of land that has survived in the city connects all the stories. For the developer Witty, this is a treasure – he can buy the land and build another skyscraper on it: Win’s Tower, dedicated to his missing son. Since his son’s mysterious disappearance seventeen years earlier, after the May 1992 protests, he and his wife, Wongduan – formerly a movie star, now a successful screenwriter – cannot reconcile with. For Ida Barnes, an expat living in various capitals of Southeast Asia since childhood, the same patch of green seen from the apartment lures her to say goodbye to her life. But there is also Comrade Aeon, a vigilant observer of slum life, who sees more than we first realize…
the first novel by Emma Larkin, the author of non-fiction writings about Burma (one of which was published in Poland, translated by Agnieszka Nowakowska – Spustoszenie. Niepowiedziana historia katastrofy i dyktatury wojskowej w Birmie, published by Czarne), is a very well-executed combination of a political and moral mystery, based on events from Thai history, which unfortunately are still not talked about enough.
