Bangkok Wakes to Rain audiobook by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Narrated by Euan Morton (2019)

Bangkok Wakes to Rain audiobook cover by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

A house in Bangkok is the confluence of lives shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. A missionary doctor pines for his native New England even as he succumbs to the vibrant chaos of nineteenth-century Siam. A post-World War II society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting her solitary fate. A jazz pianist in the age of rock, haunted by his own ghosts, is summoned to appease the house's resident spirits. In the present, a young woman tries to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in a New Krungthep yet to come, savvy teenagers row tourists past landmarks of the drowned old city they themselves do not remember.

Time collapses as these lives collide and converge, linked by the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibious, ever-morphing capital itself. Bangkok Wakes to Rain is an elegy for what time erases and a love song to all that persists, yearning, into the unknowable future.

Audiobook review

Kirkus Reviews reviewed Euan Morton's narration:

"Scottish actor Euan Morton adopts a primarily American intonation for Pitchaya Sudbanthad's impressive multilayered evocation of Bangkok past, present, and future. The choice makes sense, as many of the characters are American visitors or Thai expats living in the States. Morton's smooth, unhurried pace echoes the fluid, aqueous writing that mirrors Bangkok's riverine setting. Also, he doesn't differentiate vocally between humans and spirits, which maintains the flow and otherworldly quality of this unusual and arresting debut novel."
— Kirkus Reviews (audiobook review, 2019)

Critical praise for the book

"This breathtakingly lovely novel is an accomplished debut, beautifully crafted and rich with history rendered in the most human terms."

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Sudbanthad provides a broad overview of Bangkok's history while diving deep into individual stories of romance, revolution, and suffering… vivid stories that combine to create a resonant whole."

— Booklist, via Penguin Random House

"All of Sudbanthad's characters live and breathe with authenticity, and his prose is deeply moving, making for an evocative debut."

— Publishers Weekly

About Pitchaya Sudbanthad

Pitchaya Sudbanthad grew up in Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and the American South, and currently splits time between Bangkok and Brooklyn. He has received fellowships in fiction writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the MacDowell Colony, and is a contributing writer at The Morning News. Bangkok Wakes to Rain is his debut novel.

The novel was selected as a notable book of the year by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the Edward Stanford Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place.

For more information, visit Pitchaya Sudbanthad's official website.