Books

Landlady in Bangkok, by Karen Swenson (National Poetry Series)

Journalist and poet Karen Swenson compiled a poetry travelogue about her travels around Southeast Asia—Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Publishers Weekly writes: "These aren't the romantic escapist imaginings of a Westerner fulfilling one stage of a personal or a professional itinerary. Rather, Swenson shows how a writer can be enriched, honestly, by what is 'alien.'"

Bangkok 8, by John Burdett (2003)

This crime thriller paints a vivid, unsentimental, and empathetic picture of Bangkok's gritty street life, with an insider's understanding of its workings and motivations. Its narrator is an original voice in the noir genre: Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a world-weary Buddhist cop whose mother is a Thai ex-prostitute and unknown father an American G.I. The plot stumbles at the end, but readers should enjoy the wild ride getting there.

Check out more books in our Travel Library.