The Third Sex: Kathoey--Thailand's Ladyboys

#247
Title: The Third Sex: Kathoey--Thailand's Ladyboys
Author: Richard Totman
Publisher: Silkworm Books
Year: 2003
221 pages

A reasonably systematic study of kathoeys, combining sociological and ethnographic techniques. The author does some creative dramatizing that I thought detracted from the utility of the book and slid it over to a more sensationalistic genre. Read with the Thai section of War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia for a better understanding of kathoeys' historically rather grim HIV statistics.

Gender-based Violence During the Khmer Rouge Regime: Stories of Survivors from the Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) (2nd ed.)

#246
Title: Gender-based Violence During the Khmer Rouge Regime: Stories of Survivors from the Democratic Kampuchea (1975-1979) (2nd ed.)
Author: Nakagawa Kasumi
Publisher: unknown
Year: 2008
51 pages

The link is to the first edition. I'll replace it, and the image, if I can. This monograph is a useful outline of violence against women in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period. These events (including rape) are not much discussed in other sources.

N.P.

#245
Title: N.P.
Author: Banana Yoshimoto
Translator: Ann Sherif
Publisher: faber and faber
Year: 1990/1994
194 pages

An enjoyable short novel from Yoshimoto, focused on a set of interconnected relationships that includes live and dead people and interrelated manuscripts. The language is spare and elegant, the plot engaging. The idea that a manuscript can make people die brings to mind both the culling songs of Palahniuk's Lullaby and Monty Python's "Killer Joke." This element of the plot, which was the most interesting element to me, seemed not to reach its fullest potential. However, I still enjoyed the characters and situations.

The Gate

#244
Title: The Gate
Author: François Bizot
Publisher: Libri
Year: 2003
336 pages

Unlike many memoirists of the Cambodian civil war, Bizot was an adult and not Cambodian. In fact, he was the only foreigner actually detained by the Khmer Rouge who survived the experience. This was in the early years of their insurgency and is detailed in first part of the book; the second half has elements that are more familiar to the reader of histories and memoirs of this era and describes his experiences inside the French compound after the fall of Phnom, Penh.

Bizot's child figures prominently, though alwahys as an absent figure; her mother, a Cambodian, is even further removed from the narrative. The time jump between sections is disconcerting and lends a fragmented air to the book. Since Bizot worked with ancient Buddhist texts and objects, perhaps this is deliberate parallelism. Read with one of the Cambodian narratives of the Khmer Rouge period, with Swain's The River of Time and the film The Killing Fields for a rounded description of the foreign experience prior to evacuation.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

#243
Title: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
Author: Michael Chabon
Publisher: Sceptre
Year: 1998
240 pages

An enjoyable early novel from Chabon. I enjoyed his language while in some moods finding it over the top. For example: "As she moved her hands and head in the still light evening, talking about herself, the pearls seemed to string and restring themselves on the invisible thread of her gestures" (p. 75). In  some moods I admire this and in others it tires me. Throughout, I thought of Gatsby and wondered if this were a re-telling with variations. After reading other reviews, I think this perspective is substantiated, so first read The Great Gatsby, then this.

The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison

#242
Title: The Damage Done: Twelve Years of Hell in a Bangkok Prison
Authors: Warren Fellows with Jack Marx
Publisher: Asia Books
Year: 1997
Country: Thailand
221 pages

Fellows makes a reasonable case that despite his crime, Thailand's prisons are inhumane. I don't have any reason to argue this, and he provides plenty of evidence to substantiate it. This rather grim narrative is not artful and could use an editor; however, its roughness as a narrative does contribute to its apparent sincerity and lack of artifice.