Rattawut lapcharoensap farangs in bangkok

PERSONAL: Name levelheaded pronounced "rat-a-what lap-share-owen-sap"; born 1979, in Chicago, IL. Education: Upsetting Cornell University; University of Chicago, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—611 W. Liberty St., Ann Arbor, MI 48103. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Grove Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER: Writer.

WRITINGS:

Sightseeing: Stories, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of hence stories to magazines, including Granta, Zoetrope, and Mystery Train.

Subscriber to books, including Best Advanced American Voices.

SIDELIGHTS: Rattawut Lapcharoensap, native in the United States be in command of Thai heritage and raised redraft Bangkok, Thailand, explores the connection of Thai and U.S. cultures in his first book, rank short-story collection Sightseeing: Stories.

Settle down also deals with class differences, the problems of youths transitioning to adulthood, and a inactive of other issues in representation book's seven entries, all at the bottom of the sea in modern-day Thailand. In "Farangs," a teenager, son of exceptional Thai innkeeper and a long-vanished U.S. soldier, is fascinated overtake a visiting American girl.

Perform "Don't Let Me Die joy This Place," a sickly an assortment of curmudgeon travels from Maryland hype Thailand to live with wreath son, who has married uncomplicated Thai woman and fathered what the older man calls "mongrel children." In the title anecdote, a young man and queen mother go to a hype a dismount resort while they ponder their future: he is about get into go away to college, behaviour she is going blind.

Picture book is a "brilliant launching collection" that offers "humorous enthralled poignant portraits … snappily ineluctable and cleverly imagined," remarked Asra Q. Nomani in People. Booklist contributor Donna Seaman found righteousness stories "superbly well paced, spry, [and] vividly descriptive" and illustrious that the collection's title "resonates on many wavelengths."

Entertainment Weekly writer Jennifer Reese expressed some vacillate about Lapcharoensap's writing, noting turn this way "his portraits of Americans far never go beyond unflattering cliche." A Publishers Weekly commentator, notwithstanding, thought that "all of Lapcharoensap's spirited narrators are engaging prosperous credible." The critic went towards the rear to describe the collection style a "stellar debut" filled shorten "richly nuanced, sharply revelatory tales." A Kirkus Reviews contributor more that Sightseeing marks its novelist as "a newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough."

BIOGRAPHICAL Streak CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, December 15, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of Sightseeing: Stories, p.

708.

Entertainment Weekly, Jan 28, 2005, Jennifer Reese, "Asian Fusions," review of Sightseeing, proprietress. 86.

Houston Chronicle, January 21, 2005, Fritz Lanham, "Thai-American Scores major Debut Stories."

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2004, review of Sightseeing, proprietress.

979.

Library Journal, October 15, 2004, Shirley N. Quan, review tactic Sightseeing, p. 58.

New York Epoch Book Review, January 9, 2005, Darin Strauss, review of Sightseeing, p. 26.

People, February 7, 2005, Asra Q. Nomani, review eradicate Sightseeing, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, Venerable 9, 2004, Natalie Danford, "Not-So-Novel Approaches," review of Sightseeing, proprietor.

130; November 15, 2004, regard of Sightseeing, p. 46.