The author of multiple story collections, novels and screenplays, Prabda Yoon is also a translator (of classics by Salinger and Nabokov), independent publisher (of books both originally written in and translated into Thai), graphic designer, and filmmaker. Having lived in the USA from the ages of 14 to 26, he speaks fluent English and is at home moving between the cultures.

Mui Poopoksakul is a lawyer-turned-translator. She grew up in Bangkok and Boston, and practiced law in New York City before returning to the literary field. She is the translator of Prabda Yoon's The Sad Part Was (2017) and Moving Parts (2018), both winners of a PEN Translates award, and of Duanwad Pimwana's Arid Dreams (2020) and Bright (2019).

The Sad Part Was by Prabda Yoon translated by Mui Poopoksakul

In these witty, postmodern stories, Yoon riffs on pop culture, experiments with punctuation, flirts with sci-fi and, in a metafictional twist, mocks his own position as omnipotent author. Highly literary, his narratives offer an oblique reflection of contemporary Bangkok life, exploring the bewildering disjunct and oft-hilarious contradictions of a modernity that is at odds with many traditional Thai ideas on relationships, family, school and work.

CURATOR'S NOTE

In these twelve stories, you are invited to travel to Bangkok in the hands of a prolific writer and award-winning translator who delight in the form, the twists, and the quirkiness of life, through the lens of urban Thai culture. First published in English more than 15 years after winning the Southeast Asian Write Award, this book also serves as a visible reminder of the value of risk-taking, bold, and tenacious small presses. –E.D.E. Bell

 

REVIEWS

  • "This trenchant observation of lives in a vibrant, alluring setting, elegantly rendered in English for the first time, definitely raises the bar for Thai literary works to be translated in the future."

    – World Literature Today

  • "The Sad Part Was is unique in the contemporary literature of Bangkok – it doesn't feature bar girls, white men, gangsters or scenes redolent of The Hangover Part II. Instead it reveals, sotto voce, the Thai voices that are swept up in their own city's wild confusion and energy, and it does so obliquely, by a technique of partial revelation always susceptible to tenderness."

    – New Statesman

  • "Evocative, erudite, and often very funny stories of Bangkok life."

    – The Guardian

  • "Formally inventive, always surprising and often poignant, with the publication of this fluid and assured translation of The Sad Part Was, Prabda Yoon can take his place alongside the likes of Ben Lerner and Alejandro Zambra as a writer committed to demonstrating that there's life in the old fiction-dog yet.'"

    – Adam Biles, author of Feeding Time
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

PEN IN PARENTHESES

The sheet of paper fell (It's from a notebook I had when I was in seventh grade. Its blue lines are starting to fade. There's only a single sentence on the entire page, three lines down from the top. My handwriting was neat, done with a black ballpoint pen, and the letters are still surprisingly sharp. The sentence says: "I will never change."

Change from what, I can't remember anymore. I'm at a loss trying to figure out whether I've kept my own word. I'm trying to recall what I might have been thinking when I was about twelve or thirteen; whatever it was, it seems to have been a matter of life and death. Serious enough, at least, that I'd felt the need to promise myself not to deviate from whatever path I'd been on. Whatever idea I'd managed to dream up, I must have been really taken with it. Philosophical aphorisms used to fascinate me, perhaps because I fancied myself as a wit. Maybe I happened to read something that really struck a chord with me, and decided to make it my mantra. There was one that went: "If you want to be a good person, that means you aren't." I slapped my knee after I read that: Clever! Aha! That hits the nail right on the head. It's so true: wanting something means you still haven't achieved it. Therefore, I mustn't want it. Instead, I have to behave in such a way that other people will consider me to be good. That one still cracks me up even now.

My mother said: When you grow up, there might be a time when you ask yourself why you were put on this earth. When you can't find a reason, you'll blame your father and me for giving birth to you. 'I never begged you to bring me into this world. The two of you made an executive decision, and I wasn't even consulted.' I want to tell you right now that your father and I are sorry. What you're thinking is true. We had no right to give birth to you without asking. Not only did we bring you into this world, we boss you around, make you go to school, make you eat vegetables, make you read, make you get up, make you go to bed. We try to dictate your life. 'You should do this for a living. You should marry that kind of person. You have to wai these people nicely when you see them. You have to respect this person, call so-and-so uncle and so-and-so aunt.' Your father and I sincerely take the blame for all of this. If possible, when you feel like having a child of your own, ask it first if it wants to be born. If you don't receive an answer, you can take that as a no. And if it doesn't want to be born, don't bring it here. Let it be born to a cat or a dog as fate will have it. Your father and I are sorry. If you're angry or if you hate us, that's up to you.