The following is extracted directly from Pira Sudham's website as a show of respect for his writings which provide an incredibly in depth view of the Isaan, the place I live and love.
Born in an Isan Village, Burirum Province, the northeastern region of Thailand, Pira Canning Sudham went through a feudal education based on rote learning and authoritative teaching in the village primary school and in a state high school in Bangkok.
While in the second year at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, he won a New Zealand government scholarship to study English Literature at Victoria University. Having chosen to write in English, he continued to read English literature in Australia and later in England where he wrote poems, short stories and Monsoon Country, the first book of a Shadowed Country. His writings stem partly from defiance for having lived a suppressed life in the 1960s-1970s under despotic regimes and partly from a driving force, having first-hand experiences of dire needs and social injustice in Thailand.
Now he leads a solitary life in his home village where he sets up funds to provide scholarships to needy students and teaches impoverished children in and around the District of Napo at a private school he built in 1997.
Widely read and highly acclaimed, Pira Canning Sudham's literary works have become a powerful voice of the powerless.
