I’m always intrigued by novels set in Thailand that were written before ‘my time.’ By that that I mean books written before I was born or when I was still young and didn’t know anything about Asia, in general, and Thailand, in particular. One such novel is The Solid Gold Buddha by W.H....
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Argument The short story Cat in the rain by Ernest Hemingway is one of my favorite pieces of short fiction written by an American writer. I read the story for the first time in my second year at the university and, ever since then, whenever I met people who shared my passion for literature,...
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Larry Welch is an American writer, author of three books of nonfiction, who has been living in Thailand since 2007. He was born in 1942 in Michigan, and now resides at Pathumthani where he has just finished two years of teaching English at Suankularb Wittayalai Rangsit School.  An entrepreneur, he operates the Full...
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A tragic hero is a man that has achieved greatness but through a weakness or flaw in his character, falls into the depths of misery, followed by death. This essay will demonstrate that Michael Henchard, the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge is such a tragic hero, a “Man of Character” to...
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Coming to Thailand and not reading Alex Garland’s The Beach is like going to the Louvre and not waiting in line to see Mona Lisa. It took me quite a while to get my hands on The Beach, but once I did, I couldn’t put it down. I’m sure that many people around the...
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The fragments I chose to analyze in this paper are taken from Lord of the Flies by William Golding. They are part of the chapter entitled “Gift for the Darkness.” The reason why these paragraphs have been chosen and not others is that they are considered to be the essence of the entire book. Plot “Gift...
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The concept of collaboratively writing a novel, that is by multiple people together, is not new, especially that in the age of the internet, the technical part involved in such a project is quite straightforward. To exemplify this, I’ll mention just two successful online projects: A Million Penguins (completed) and Glypho (ongoing). Chester’s Magic Island...
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Story by Voicu Mihnea Simandan. Illustrations by Eric Barrientos. There are five people in the Lester family: the father, the mother, Brandon, Alice, and Wasan. They live in a house on top of a hill. Brandon is nine years old and goes to school in the nearby town. Alice, his 4-year-old sister, and Wasan,...
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People walk for various reasons. Some, like myself, walk as much as they can to stay in shape, but never stray away from their comfort zone. For others, such as Ajarn Pramuan Pengchan, walking means a journey of self discovery. In 2008, walking 1,000 km from Chiang Mai to Surat Thani, professor and philosopher...
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Written by Eric Barrientos, illustrator of The Ironman. A Play After a few long months of waiting, the book that I worked on is finally complete. The book is called, The Ironman. A Play written by Voicu Mihnea Simandan, a Bangkok-based Romanian writer, and carefully illustrated by yours truly. The collaboration started somewhere around...
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