num_pages: 250
description: Sightseeing is a debut written by a young, award-winning Thai-American writer. Set in contemporary Thailand, these stories are generous, radiant tales of family bonds, youthful romance, generational conflicts, and cultural shiftings beneath the glossy surface of a warm, Edenic setting. The stories in Sightseeing present a nation far removed from its exoticized stereotypes.In the prizewinning opening story, "Farangs," the son of a beachside motel owner commits the cardinal sin of falling for a pretty tourist, and the confrontation that ensues between the native boy and the girl's American boyfriend culminates wondrously amid flying mangoes and Clint Eastwood - a pet pig - swimming out to sea. In "Sightseeing," the much-anticipated holiday of a young man about to leave for college and his loving and fiercely independent mother becomes a different kind of pilgrimage altogether when they are forced to confront the mother's impending blindness. The concluding novella, "Cockfighter," is "an astonishing coming-of-ager" (Kirkus Reviews), in which a young girl witnesses her proud father's valiant but foolhardy battle against a local delinquent whose family's vicious stranglehold on the villagers has passed down unchecked through generations.
language: English
title: Sightseeing
titlecomplete: Sightseeing
genres: Fiction, Asia, Short Stories, Literature, Asian Literature, Travel, Contemporary, Short Story Collection, 21st Century, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 2671
places: Thailand
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Guardian First Book Award
publisher: Grove Press