The Fabulist

(Paperback)

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A polyphonic reimagining of Thai history, sweeping across the earth's creation to the speculated future Set in the district of Kaeng Khoi, Saraburi province, Thailand, The Fabulist is Uthis Haemamool's 2015 epic novel that offers a palimpsestic account of one family's tales and traumas in a sweeping polyphony of voices. Drawing upon local myths, folk tales and annals, their stories traverse across centuries of familiar historical markers-Buddhist myths, the Cold War era, the recent political movements in 2010s to the speculated future-to explore the violence of feudalism, paternalism, patriarchy and modernisation passed onto contemporary Thai society. But pulsing across these historical terrains are the storytellers' desires to rewrite themselves into a history that relegated them into mere ghosts or victims of madness. In feverish torrents of accents, tones and timbres of voices, we experience the fleshliness of their once hollowed identity in their struggle to reclaim their narratives through the diverse acts of storytelling. Written as a hybrid between diary entry and investigative novel, Volume 4 is the story of the Ghost Writer's confrontation with the conflicts of his past that resurfaces along with the ripples of his family's trauma. When his mother asks for the Ghost Writer, Prateep, to sell his share of land inherited from his late father, Prateep returns to his hometown in Kaeng Khoi to deal with the paperwork, only to find himself and his family beset by debt, madness, violence, imprisonment and death-all of which he attempts to deal by writing them into fiction. The story offers a scathing critique of the country's severe inequality- poverty, addiction, education, the legal system and patriarchal burdens that corrode one family's relationships. Volume 5 is told through the voice of Maya, the daughter of Maitree and great granddaughter of the Old Woman in Volume 1. Her spontaneous and unfiltered meditations on time, history and language, which demonstrates the poetic philosophical musings and sharpness of a literary critic, cut through the dishevelled seams of the stories told by the other characters in the novel, simultaneously unravelling and entangling them together in new and unexpected ways by situating them into historical contexts that were never mentioned by its original storyteller, such as the colonial history of Buddhism, the state persecution of communists in the 60s-70s, and the Yellow and Red Shirts movements before the 2014 military coup.

Author Bio

Uthis Haemamool's novels swim in the brackish waters of Thailand's political history where fact and fiction coalesce. Through his exploration of historical facts, myths, supernatural beliefs, his writings grapple with the age-old values ingrained in contemporary Thai society, values which are steeped with violence and rendered vivid within the psychological plane of his characters and their innermost desires. Among his six novels, he became widely known for his third novel, The Brotherhood of Kaeng Khoi which won him the Seven Book Awards and the S.E.A. Write Award in 2009. In 2017, his novel Silhouette of Desire was published in Thai, followed by an art exhibition of the same name that showcases his drawings and paintings. The novel was then adapted for the stage under the direction of Toshiki Okada, which premiered in Bangkok and staged at Centre Pompidou Paris in 2018 and Tokyo in 2019. Translator- Palin Ansusinha currently lives in Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated from King's College London in 2017 with a BA (First Class Honours) in English Literature. From December 2017 to December 2018, Palin was a curatorial assistant in the first edition of Thailand Biennale Krabi 2018 where she worked closely with international artists such as Jana Winderen, Tori Wr nes, A K Dolven, Alicja Kwade, Valentina Karga and Amber Ginsburg. In 2015, she was an exhibition researcher for 'Erwin Wurm- Philosophy of Instructions curated by Pichaya Aime Suphavanij' at Bangkok Art and Cultural Centre. Together with Estelle Pandao and Jeanne Penjan Lassus, she co-founded Moom Mong Collective in 2017 and co-curated their first project, 'The House of Flowing Reflections' as part of Bangkok Biennial 2018. Selected writings include Touching, Receiving- Relating Through Sound (2018) for Teleaesthetics e-magazine; Live, but dirtier (2018) co-written with Jennifer Boyd and Katharina Joy Book in Critical Interruptions Vol. 1 published by Live Art Development Agency, London; and Critical Interruptions (2016), a multi-authored live publication as part of the Steakhouse Festival, London.