OF TIME AND TIDE
Atsiri Thammachoat

Time and tide wait for no woman.
Noi, at 19, is three times widowed
– a girl working overtime by gutting fish
before Police Officer Sommai takes her away from the tide
to a life of love and leisure that lasts only until he, too, is killed.
The narrator's mother is a wealthy fishing boat owner
who has lost everything. Both women are losers
in the tremendous changes that reshape Thai shores
within a couple of decades,
from the alcyon days of drift-net fishing
to those of the trawlers and today's era of ... mass tourism

Little people, simple lives, modest dreams,
traditional beliefs, petty fights, tragic accidents,
and the dictates of the authorities:
how fishermen alienate themselves from nature
and lose their moorings is told
in a patchwork, poetic narrative of rare beauty.
A 1980s masterpiece to defy time and tide.