Rice Without Rain

Out of a silent harvest, a scorched Maekung valley, comes the stirring story of Jinda, a courageous young Thai girl. Her village, like others in rural Thailand, suffers from the exorbitant land rent, leaving the farmers poverty-stricken and landless. Then, students from Bangkok come to live in their midst, sowing seeds of change, leading up eventually to a student rally in Bangkok that explodes into a horrifying massacre. The refreshing simplicity of Rice Without Rain, and its compassionate and deeply sensitive study of human endeavour, add to the potency of this unforgettable novel. Minfong Ho is an award-winning Chinese-American writer. She won the Cultural Medallion Award, the highest arts accolade in Singapore, in 1997. Her works frequently deal with the lives of people living in poverty in Southeast Asian countries.