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David Young
David Young, an expat from northern Michigan, has written two delicious novels that explore the nightlife of Thailand’s largest city, and a third which takes place in Chiang Mai.
Young's The Scribe describes the world of a man who’s job it is to translate letters written to, and by bar girls, to their foreign customers.
In Thailand Joy, the story of a country girl who has moved to Bangkok to explore better economic opportunities, Young offers a hard-boiled picture of the Haves vs. the Have-nots:
"Look around you.
There’s nothing but automobiles and people and dogs and pollution.
The air is so thick, you’ll be able to walk on it in another few years.
You don’t live in Bangkok, Joy.
You live under Bangkok.
Ground level is about four or five meters above our heads.
Don’t believe me?
Give it some thought.
The only real jobs are above the second floor of office buildings.
The only real places to live are condominiums, high in the sky.
Smell the air. Is it fresh? Look at the faces of the people.
Are they happy? Just you wait and see, Joy. Bangkok won't ever fall.
Its underbelly, where you stand now, will simply harden, like rice burned in the bottom of a pan.
And the survivors will be up there in their office buildings and condos, waiting to lay fresh concrete on all of this, all of us."
Young, whose influences include Dostoyevsky, Céline, and Charles Bukowski, has distilled many of the ironies of Thailand’s relationships between people from both sides of the legal fence in the masterfully-written Fast Eddie’s Lucky 7 A Go Go, set in Chiang Mai.
“To insure his investment, he paid off the police to protect him from the Mafia.
He paid off the Mafia to protect him from the police,” he writes, describing a farang bar owner.
Eddie’s is a masterfully-written story of betrayal and intrigue, which we found impossible to put down, and is the first of Young’s books to be published under his own company.
Young’s Thailand-situated books include:
- The Scribe (2000, ISBN 974-243-051-9)
- Thailand Joy (2002, ISBN 974-243-104-3)
- Fast Eddie's Lucky 7 A Go Go (2004, ISBN 974-91664-0-X)
- Sukhumvit Road (2005, ISBN 974-92636-8-5)
See more of David Young on the web at: www.hostagepress.net
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