Bright

Honorable mention in the Global Humanities Translation Prize

When five-year-old Kampol is told by his father to wait for him in front of some run-down apartment buildings, the confused boy does as told—he waits, and waits, and waits, until he realizes his father isn’t coming back anytime soon. Adopted by the community, Kampol is soon being raised by figures like Chong the shopkeeper, who rents out calls on his telephone and goes into debt while extending his customers endless credit. Kampol ...