Being(s) in Another(’s) Place: Practices of the Expatriate Bangkok Novel

This paper investigates the depiction of mixed-race characters in two novels by expatriate authors that take place in Bangkok: John Burdett’s Bangkok 8 (2004) and Timothy Hallinan’s A Nail Through the Heart (2007). These two novels offer contrasting but complementary views of hybrid characters dealing with the environment of Bangkok. The paper offers a different vision of hybridity from Westerns authors who posit not an abstract East but a specific locale made palpable and concrete. The hybridity of these two novels occurs in two ways: explicitly in the narration and their characters’ dialogue, and implicitly in the ventriloquy performed by the authors’ informants, who speak through those same narrators and characters. The conventions of the genre of hard-boiled/noir novel contribute to these novels’ ability to give a partial but sympathetic account of two different types of hybrid identity.