AS A CITIZEN of two countries, Rattawut Lapcharoensap always feels like a tourist. 'I don't feel quite American enough when I'm in America, and I don't feel quite Thai enough when I'm in Thailand,' Lapcharoensap says from Ithaca, New York. 'So there's a sense of feeling like a cultural outsider in both places.'
That psychological distance has reaped big dividends for the 26-year-old. His first book, Sightseeing, has won praise for the craftsmanship of its seven short stories and for offering what, perhaps, no other book written in English has before: a window into Thai culture, customs and thinking. Lapcharoensap has been praised for his rendering of Thailand's idiosyncrasies, his imagery and his snappy, sometimes profane, often funny prose - along with the broad emotional range of his stories, from antic to heartbreaking.
Published in the US a couple of weeks after the massive tsunami that shook Southeast Asia, the stories - which linger on the landscape's beauty and the sea's power - take on an unlooked-for poignancy and prescience.
'A lot of the stories were written out of a response to travel accounts to Thailand, where Thai people were in the background, being used as props for a middle-aged white character, and the Thai people tended to speak in clipped sentences and didn't seem like the Thai people I knew,' Lapcharoensap says. 'The characters and stories were created out of a desire to see a much broader Thai humanity.'
But he has no illusions. 'I don't speak for the Thai people and for Thailand,' he says. 'I'm simply attempting to create characters I love and to render people as realistically as possible.'
Lapcharoensap netted a six-figure contract for Sightseeing and his novel-in-progress. He's the recipient of a David T.K. Wong fellowship, through which he's spending a year at the University of East Anglia in Norfolk, England, working on the novel. So the citizen of two countries has adopted a third - at least, until July, when the fellowship ends.