Bangkok Book Club

In Person Meetup

• What we'll do

Finish reading, then join us in person, share your insights over a meal and/or drink(s) at Bar Storia del Caffè, The Salil Hotel. It’s on Soi Sukhumvit 57 and is a 5-minute walk from BTS Thonglor station.

Approximately 368 pages. It’s available at Kinokuniya Bookstore for 621 baht https://thailand.kinokuniya.com/bw/9780224099790?cookie=1b3bd6c3f07b9d2703ce9a641303c66c&prod=0224099795, $14.99 on amazon kindle or $19.49 (non-member price) as an audiobook on audible.com (9 hours 36 minutes).

Should anyone who RSVP’s be looking for the epub version please send a message to the host.

Synopsis

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.

A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, “Flesh” chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy.

• Important to know

No entrance fee, no membership fees. Your patronage of the cafe is highly appreciated, as usage of their facility is without charge. Expect meal/drink to average 450 baht thereaboutsm

Note: previous meetup January 6 is “Flesh” by David Szalay.

• What we'll do

Finish reading, then join us in person, share your insights over a meal and/or drink(s) at Bar Storia del Caffè, The Salil Hotel. It’s on Soi Sukhumvit 57 and is a 7-minute walk from BTS Thonglor station.

Approximately 508 pages.
It’s available at Kinokuniya Bookstore for 595 baht.
At Chula books it’s priced at 535 baht.
On Shopee it’s around 450 baht.
(The Thai translated version of the book is around 400 baht on Shopee).
On amazon kindle it’s $9.99.
Unfortunately it’s not available in audiobook format, nor on epub nor pdf.

Synopsis

1941. War is raging in Europe and now sweeps through South-East Asia.

In Bangkok, Kate Fallon, an American nurse, who came to Thailand to leave her past of poverty and a broken heart behind, and Lawrence Gallet, an English journalist, are trapped in the chaos of conflict, believing their love can overcome their differences before being torn apart.

Lawrence flees to China to escape the advancing Japanese army, while the net closes slowly around Kate, who has remained behind, increasingly threatened and forced to hide her identity.

A sweeping saga moving from a Thailand uneasily poised between Japan and the West to the ravaged battlegrounds of Burma and India, from the charity ward of a Bangkok hospital to bombed airfields, from the Thai domestic resistance movement to the deadly jungles of the Arakan, Bangkok in Times of Love and War is a story of life and death, passion, loyalty and loss, and of a man and a woman caught up in the upheaval of history.

• Important to know

No entrance fee, no membership fees. Your patronage of the cafe is highly appreciated, as usage of their facility is without charge. Expect meal/drink to average 450 baht thereabouts