Shadowed Country

Shadowed Country is undeniably Pira Canning Sudham's acme in his literary endeavour. Since his early years of reading English literature in universities in New Zealand and Australia, Sudham has been craftily practising his art, employing the English language to impart vital messages in People of Esarn, Tales of Thailand and Monsoon Country. The latter is the first book of Shadowed Country. Much is tacitly done, of course, while he courageously covers actual occurrences. He seems to say: "The marked men, who have been able to get away even with murders, must not escape."Widely he casts his punitive net. He also draws from personal experiences so that the reality fuses with imagination, making it appear that Shadowed Country is the author's biography in disguise. He goes so far as to use photos with appropriate captions for illustrations, seemingly saying: "See? These happenings are real." But for some fully treated characters, Pira Canning Sudham cunningly reassembles mixed parts of the netted people whom he vivisects for this purpose. What make them so convincingly real derives from Sudham's well-earned artistic skills. On the other hand, if exploiting recent historical facts is a taboo, Sudham absolutely commits himself to honesty. In Shadowed Country, he puts words in the protagonist Prem Surin's mouth: "I have put my life on the line".