The neglect in his native land is, in part, due to his unconventional writing style, which doesn't appear to be rooted in any obvious Thai tradition.

His sentences are unusually long, at times repetitious, yet fluid and intense. His paragraphing is unorthodox. His books come with full-page layouts, similar to Thai texts of bygone days, rather than the modern-day indented page.

Also, the surrealistic elements and the absurdities that run through much of his work may alienate many Thai readers. In 1993, the prestigious SEAWrite award committee eliminated his entry in the final round.

For the unprepared, the content of his stories can be very unsettling, particularly to anyone who finds violence and the grotesque offensive.

The central character in his latest novel, "Matanusati", is a 35-year-old mother who struggles against all kinds of violence - sexual, physical and psychological - to defend her teen daughter in a hostile city.

As the story progresses, she is both the victim and the agent of incredibly barbarous acts.

The style and content of the story shift constantly and unexpectedly between reality and phantasmagoria, the reader's uncertainty over what is real and what is fantasy lending an intensity to the action.

The story is told through the eyes of the daughter, and begins with a dream-like tale of their search among Dickensian settings to find safe shelters to rent and ways of earning honest money.

Paradoxically, it's when they manage to buy a house of their own that the biggest and most traumatic nightmare begins.

During a stormy night, the mother leaves the bedroom to investigate a strange sound downstairs. The daughter, lying in bed with a fever, is left trying to quell her unease, which is by now shared by the reader.

The girl has reason to be scared after a series of violent events. Earlier, on their way to what they believe will be their safe haven, a male customer in a shop verbally abuses her.

Her mother grabs a piece of burning firewood from the shop's stove and hits him,breaking his jaw before slamming the burning firewood into his mouth.

In another incident, a would-be rapist is fought off with an iron lever and then forced to keep in his mouth a used sanitary pad. The bestial man vows revenge.

With the terrible fear that ratchets gradually with every sentence, page after page, the reader wonders whether the mother will return to protect her daughter just as she has in the past.

At the same time, the girl's flashbacks of her mother's violent acts can only be a prelude to a terrible revenge to be staged by man or beast. The only question is when and how.

In contrast to the long, drawn-out suspense in the early narrative, the final and fatal encounter is swift.

As she has always promised - "I will come back as soon as I can. We will chart changes for the better" - the mother, this time heavily soaked in blood, returns to the bed-ridden girl, who is trembling in horror.

The story's last paragraph comes in the form of a police report, and it reveals how one Takien Kaentakien, convicted of attempted rape, escaped from prison nine days ago. After tracking down the whereabouts of the two women he hid in the house, planning to rape one or both of them and then kill the mother.

A desperate struggle with the mother, using a knife to defend herself and her child, ensues, before he tears out her throat, drinking her blood. In the aftermath of the bloodbath, he checks for signs of life and finds none.

It's only when the bloody body rises from the floor and walks up the stairs that the assailant goes out of his mind.

Takien is found sitting in a foetal-position by the back door of the house the following morning, covered in blood and human matter and crying like a baby.

It takes the police seven days to understand his incoherent ramblings.

The two protagonists remain anonymous throughout the story, every-women identified only in their roles as poverty-stricken mother and child fighting to survive in a heartless world. Takien Kaentakien represents the absolute evil in the hellish terrain they inhabit.

By Sukanya Hantrakul