Readers, Penguin fans and aspiring writers are invited to the Bangkok launch of Stamford Hospital, the debut novel of Thai author Thammika Songkaeo, at Kinokuniya bookstore, 3rd floor of Siam Paragon, Rama I Road, on Saturday from 3pm-5pm.
Praised by Harper's Bazaar Singapore, Elle, Prestige, Grazia, and more, the novel, published by Penguin Random House SEA, engages readers into urgent, often unspoken conversations about gender dynamics, intimacy and maternal mental health -- all through a gripping, autofictive lens.
Stamford Hospital follows a mother over two unsettling nights after she checks her barely-ill daughter into a hospital -- using it as a form of childcare -- just to buy herself space from the relentless demands of motherhood. Inside the sterile corridors of Stamford Hospital, she's forced to confront not only the cracks in her sexless marriage, but the quiet unravelling of her own sense of self.
Tarisa, once ambitious and thriving, never imagined a long-term life in Singapore. But after her husband's strategic decision -- citing that, as an Asian man, life was easier for him in Singapore than in the US -- the city-state becomes their permanent home. What unfolds is a portrait of a woman caught between cultures, marriage, motherhood and the haunting question of what happens to a life when its aspirations are quietly buried.
With a life that has spanned Thailand, India, Uganda, Rwanda, the US and Singapore, Thammika writes with the rare clarity of someone who has witnessed womanhood refracted through multiple cultural lenses.
Her literary debut is already stirring conversation -- a sharp, psychological story set in Singapore that interrogates motherhood, sexless marriage and the cost of ambition.
The book launch promises not only a powerful new voice in fiction coming from Thailand, but a conversation for our times -- one where intimacy, migration and the emotional toll of womanhood are laid bare with grace and intelligence. A book signing will follow the talk moderated by Parisa Pichitmarn.
There is no admission fee. Visit facebook.com/kinothai.
