Rattawut Lapcharoensap

Thai-American author whose debut story collection Sightseeing is the finest English-language literary fiction about contemporary Thailand, seen from the Thai rather than the tourist perspective.

Rattawut Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago in 1979 to Thai immigrant parents and grew up between Thailand and the United States. He studied at Cornell University and received an MFA from the University of Michigan. Sightseeing (2004), his debut short story collection, was published when he was twenty-four and immediately recognised as a distinctive and significant voice.

The seven stories in Sightseeing are set across contemporary Thailand — a beach resort town on Ko Samui, a Bangkok suburb, a provincial town during a festival — and are told from the perspectives of Thai characters rather than Western visitors. The collection’s great achievement is the interiority it gives its Thai protagonists: a teenager working at his mother’s hotel, a soldier returning home, a boy caring for a sick father. The tourist economy of Thailand is always present but seen from the other side.

Lapcharoensap has published no subsequent book, making Sightseeing one of the most celebrated single debut collections in recent American literary fiction. He teaches creative writing at Harvard.