Saneh Sangsuk – författare

The village of Praeknamdang, nestled in the Thai jungle, has fallen under the spell of Song Waad, the self-proclaimed medium of The Sacred Mother. Living in fear of his connection to the Patron goddess, the villagers offer up land and wealth to the religious leader, who grows more corrupt by the day. Only one family dares to resist his growing power: a couple and their talented ten-year-old son. But one day, while out with his friends, the boy is attacked by a cobra. He becomes locked in a life-and-death struggle in which the border between the human and the animal disintegrates. Did the boy simply stray too near to a burrow, or is The Sacred Mother punishing him? A gripping existential parable, Venom introduces the UK reader to the world of Saneh Sangsuk; lush, raw, lyrical and vivid, this is storytelling at its finest.

Luang Paw Tien, the abbot of Praeknamdang Temple, is ninety-three years old and a treasure trove of stories. Most nights he entertains the children of his village with tales from his long and extraordinary life, of his childhood in a previous century, of his fifteen year pilgrimage to India and back, and of the plenitude and majesty of the jungle, in a time when it was rich with elephants, peacocks and turtles. But what the children want to hear most of all are tales of the tiger, a creature which has marked the abbots life more deeply and terribly than any other. From the mind of Saneh Sangsuk, one of the most respected and beloved of Thai authors, The Understory is a novel about storytelling, a changing world and the fearsome power of nature.