Review
The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth
2015
translated by Kong Rithdee
River Press
Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #15 (April 2019).
While on the closing chapters of this mostly mainstream novel I decided this was one of my favourite books of 2018, the superb 2015 S.E.A. Write Award winner now translated into English. It’s the story of three grown-up orphans, two sisters and a male musician, making their way in 1980s/90s Bangkok as they try to escape their fates, with frequent digressions into music, food, sex and the occasional, inevitable supernatural encounter. The whole experience reads a bit like a ‘lakorn’ (a Thai TV soap opera) but with much more depth and characters you feel for; the ramshackle townhouse they live in, replete with birds and a great variety of flora, is also depicted especially well.
But it’s the three central characters who enchant the most, the two sisters Chareeya and Chalika who mostly try to avoid drama, Pran the taciturn boy who plays bass in a Bangkok band and has differing but complex relationships with both girls. Also of particular interest among the cast of secondary characters is Uncle Thanit, a travelling cloth merchant who takes care of them from afar and who finally disappears into another world in Xinghai, China – this episode alone would make a great short story if it was slightly rewritten and independently published.
The book may have an oddly gothic title and beautiful cover art, but I didn’t want The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth to end simply because Kuhn Veeraporn writes so well. The complexities of translating all this richness into sophisticated English must be recognised too, and this deserves to be far more widely read beyond the borders of Thailand.