Welcome Me to the Kingdom
Stories
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By:
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Mai Nardone
About this listen
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • An immersive debut set across the temples, slums, and gated estates of late-twentieth century Bangkok, telling the story of three families striving to control their destinies in a merciless, sometimes brutally violent, metropolis.
“Mai Nardone is a writer with an atlas straight to the heart. I did not want to put this book down and neither will you.”—C Pam Zhang, bestselling author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE
We came with the drought. From the window of the train, the rich brown of the Chao Phraya River marked the turn from the northeast into the central plains. We came for Bangkok on the delta. The thin tributaries that laced the provinces found full current at the capital. And in the city, we’d heard, the wealth was wide and deep.
In 1980, young lovers Pea and Nam arrive in Bangkok in search of a life, and a world, beyond Thailand’s rural outskirts. Thirty days, they promise each other. Thirty days for Pea to find work, for him to put aside his violent and unstable past and take root in this strange new land. But Bangkok does not want for male laborers, especially teenage boys with thick provincial accents, and when time finally runs out on their promise, it’s Nam who ultimately adapts to the capital’s ruthless logic and survives.
Spanning decades and perspectives, seamlessly shifting between the absurd and the tenderhearted, the interwoven stories of Welcome Me to the Kingdom introduce three families—Nam, her American husband, Rick, and their daughter, Lara; Vitat, a Thai Elvis impersonator, and his only daughter, Pinky; and Tintin and Benz, orphans who have adopted each other as brothers—who employ various schemes to lie, betray, and seduce their way to the “good life.”
These disparate citizens of Bangkok orbit each other over the next three decades—sometimes violently, passionately colliding. Through skin-whitening routines, cult conversion, gambling, and sex work, the collection’s characters look for reinvention in a city buckling under the weight of its own modernity.
Wildly imaginative and ambitious, Mai Nardone’s stories reveal the growing discrepancy between Bangkok’s smiling self-image and its ugly underbelly, and, in the process, offer a striking portrait of a city unmade by the whims of global capitalism, in a kingdom caught between this world and the next.
©2023 Mai Nardone (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Astonishing. Relentless. Mai Nardone’s interlocking stories of modern urban Thailand showcase spectacularly riveting settings and characters as they navigate desire, desperation, and survival.” (Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face)
“Revelatory, unflinching, and gorgeously written . . . Mai Nardone’s debut peers deep into the lives of Bangkok’s street kids, sex workers, sex tourists, and the privileged bicultural, biracial, and often accidental, beneficiaries of colonialism. Rarely does a work portray those clinging to the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder—and those guarding their position at the top—with such grace, nuance, and insight. Welcome Me to the Kingdom should be taught in classrooms everywhere.” (Jonathan Escoffery, author of If I Survive You)
“Welcome Me to the Kingdom transports readers to a Thailand that is gritty and lush, spangled and crumbling, aching with grit and ecstasy. Luck and want drive intertwined characters across a landscape that pulsates with life lived under unforgiving sun, and Mai Nardone is a writer with an atlas straight to the heart. I did not want to put this book down and neither will you.” (C Pam Zhang, bestselling author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold)
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Story
There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
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Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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House of Sand and Fog
- By: Andre Dubus III
- Narrated by: Andre Dubus III, Fontaine Dollas Dubus
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In this riveting novel of almost unbearable suspense, three fragile yet determined people become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis. Colonel Behrani, once a wealthy man in Iran, is now a struggling immigrant willing to bet everything he has to restore his family's dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a troubled young woman whose house is all she has left, and who refuses to let her hard-won stability slip away from her. Sheriff Lester Burdon becomes obsessed with helping her fight for justice.
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I suspect I am going to be in the minority . . .
- By BogKid on 01-12-04
By: Andre Dubus III
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Sharks in the Time of Saviors
- By: Kawai Strong Washburn
- Narrated by: Jolene Kim, Kaleo Griffith, G. K. Bowes, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1995 Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, on a rare family vacation, seven-year-old Nainoa Flores falls overboard a cruise ship into the Pacific Ocean. When a shiver of sharks appears in the water, everyone fears for the worst. But instead, Noa is gingerly delivered to his mother in the jaws of a shark, marking his story as the stuff of legends. Nainoa’s family, struggling amidst the collapse of the sugarcane industry, hails his rescue as a sign of favor from ancient Hawaiian gods - a belief that appears validated after he exhibits puzzling new abilities.
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Glad This Was Free
- By Shad Huddleston on 04-01-20
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Preparation for the Next Life
- By: Atticus Lish
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 15 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Zou Lei, orphan of the desert, migrates to work in America and finds herself slaving in New York's kitchens. She falls in love with a young man whose heart has been broken in another desert. A new life may be possible if together they can survive homelessness, lockup, and the young man's nightmares, which may be more prophecy than madness.
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Incredible craftsmanship.
- By B.J. on 04-23-15
By: Atticus Lish
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The Wangs vs. the World
- By: Jade Chang
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, lovable immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he's just been ruined by the financial crisis. Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so that he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family's ancestral lands - and his pride. Outrageously funny and full of charm, The Wangs vs. the World is an entirely fresh look at what it means to belong in America - and how going from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings one family together in a way money never could.
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Spectacular
- By Barbara on 10-11-16
By: Jade Chang
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Nine Lives
- Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans
- By: Dan Baum
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Nines Lives is a multivoiced biography of a dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city, told through the lives of nine unforgettable characters and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed New Orleans in the 1960s, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. Dan Baum brings this kaleidoscopic portrait to life, showing us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved.
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Do not miss if you're interested in New Orleans
- By Kelly on 03-22-18
By: Dan Baum
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The Saturday Night Ghost Club
- A Novel
- By: Craig Davidson
- Narrated by: Corey Brill
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns 12, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.
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Emotionless
- By Noura on 10-18-20
By: Craig Davidson
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
- By: Michael Koryta
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Janina Edwards, Fajer Al-Kaisi, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.
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The narrators are outstanding here.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 05-16-21
By: Michael Koryta
What listeners say about Welcome Me to the Kingdom
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Donald Quist
- 08-19-23
A Great Work!
Well-written and beautifully performed. The bold and nuanced narratives in this collection will stick with you long after reading.
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- MP
- 06-08-23
Very Compelling
A very compelling book that keeps your attention with many twists. The audio version is excellent.
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- MakgeolliBabe
- 07-24-24
Can’t even finish it
I don’t know why but I just don’t like this book. The stories are disjointed and hard to connect to. I was excited that this was based in Thailand and while there are insights into the cultural structures of the country, I just can’t get into this book. One of the male narrators is really grating and obnoxious for me… I am only 2/3 done and I am giving up. I wish I had used my credit for something else.
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