Review
The Sad Part Was
2002
translated by Mui Poopoksakul
Tilted Axis Press, 2017
Review by Peter Young in The Thai Literary Supplement #9 (June 2017).
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The Sad Part Was, I am reliably informed (and from my own explorations I also believe to be true) is the first ever translation of any Thai fiction to be published in the UK, a fact I find simply astounding in 2017. This collection won the 2002 SEA Write Award, and the translation into English for this edition also won the English PEN Award. Everything here seems well overdue, but I’d also say it’s been worth the wait.
Yoon is also a filmmaker, graphic designer and translator of fiction into Thai (A Clockwork Orange and R.U.R. being just two spec-fic titles he’s completed) and he has a reputation in his own fiction of both pushing boundaries and unlocking aspects of Bangkok and Thai life. There’s a temptation to say his approach to his various fictional subjects reminds me of Haruki Murakami, but while there’s a similarity to the themes of their fiction I’d need to read quite a bit more Yoon before making that assertion. There’s plenty in this collection to get a grip on, but first you have to figure out how Yoon looks at the world, to work out his sideways point of view. Most stories are centred around odd conversations and encounters that exist just this side of possibility, and there’s an element of challenging the reader to work out where a story is likely to be going, or what those vague elements of humour are actually conveying (they are certainly there). Some stories may even seem truncated or cut short, and it’s a teasing move on Yoon’s part. My favourite is the distinctly strange ‘Something in the Air’ in which a couple talk to each other like lawyers or even robots after discovering a dead man while having sex on their roof. It’s almost Kafkaesque in its set-up, but don’t hold that against him.
