Suchat Savatsi

Suchat Savatsi was born in Ayutthaya Province in Thailand in 1945. Suchatch's parents left Bangkok during World War II, fleeing the bombing. After the war, the family returned to the capital. Suchat’s father worked as a military doctor, his mother from a farming family, was engaged in farming, raising his son. Suchat studied at a school at a Buddhist temple. In one of his interviews, Suchat admitted that his father's salary was barely enough to buy the necessary things (the family had four children). The boy was very fond of reading, but there were almost no books at home, except for medical reference books. Suchat recalled how he took money from his mother’s stash several times and bought books. After a serious reprimand and a humiliating punishment, Suchat decided to earn his own money: he got a job selling coffee at the railway station. At age 12, he wrote his first short story ^[2] .

After school, Suchat enrolled at Thammasat University in Bangkok at the Faculty of Liberal Arts. The university was fond of the history of Thailand , world history. Since childhood, he was very fond of reading, in his youth he was fond of the works of Kulab Saipradit, Akat Damkeng and other popular Thai writers. In addition, Suchat attended classes in modern literature. One of his teachers was Dokmaysot , one of the most famous Thai writers. Suchat later wrote that it was thanks to her that he began to read foreign literature, although English was difficult for him to speak. Nevertheless, Suchata was not upset: the young man spent many hours reading books in a foreign language and improved translations from Thai into English. At the university he attended the Crescent Club, which included students who were fond of literature, as well as novice writers, many of whom later received recognition in Thailand and abroad ^[2] .

Suchat Savatsi was the editor-in-chief of two Thai magazines. From 1977 to 1983 in Thailand, the monthly magazine The World of the Book was published (Thai: “โลก หนังสือ”), from 1978 to 1999. - magazine "Bouquet". The articles of the journals raised acute social topics. So, often articles were devoted to corruption and political scandals. It is believed that it was thanks to the journalistic activities of Suchat Savatsi that readers became acquainted with previously unknown Thai and foreign writers and poets, whose works Suchat Savatsi actively published in his journals. In 1972, Suchat Savatsi released a short story collection “Silence”, which brought the writer even more popularity ^[3] .