‘With pathos and swift, transporting prose, Natalie Gregory reveals a version of Thailand rich with counterculture, protest, and the lingering ghosts of those erased from collective memory’ Aube Rey Lescure, Women’s Prize shortlisted author of River East, River West
‘Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed is a brilliant and richly imagined debut. Gregory writes beautifully about motherhood, loneliness and the clash of family and politics’ Luan Goldie, Women’s Prize longlisted author of Nightingale Point
‘This book is not read, it is imbibed through gorgeous descriptions of food and rituals that bring Thailand's political and cultural history to the fore. Motherhood and grief are treated like the mysteries they are, as are repressed desires and their costs. This is an unforgettable read' Fauzia Musa, The Strangling Fig
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Lin has come back to Bangkok to say goodbye to her dying mother. But when the funeral is over, she finds she cannot leave. Not yet. In the days that follow, grief makes everything strange: her mother’s recipes have vanished, replaced by a political leaflet Lin does not understand, and rumours of a ghost begin to pull her deeper into the past.
As Lin begins to search for the woman her mother once was, she is drawn into a buried history stretching back to 1970s Thailand – a history of idealism, violence, betrayal and loss. Across Bangkok and the country beyond, through kitchens, temples and old family homes, the story of her mother’s life slowly comes into focus. A story not only of the devoted mother Lin knew, but of a young student shaped by political upheaval, friendship and first love.
Tender, haunting and full of emotional precision, Mother, Ghost, Mango Seed is a novel about inheritance and erasure, about a daughter’s longing to know the mother she thought she had already lost, and the ways private lives are shaped by public history. It is a story of silence, survival and what it means to come home.
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