This is an extraordinary, beautiful and rather daring book

It's hard to express the joy I felt at seeing this come to life

The book is as much about the quality of time and the functions of memory as it is about the fate of a family – the descendants of a Persian Sheikh who arrived in Siam around 1600

It is a tale made up of artefacts, and houses, and biographies,

of lives and experiences – falling through the ages – and of a person wandering in this curious terrain

and it is an encounter with urban spaces, the ancient one of Ayutthaya, the early modern one of Bangkok, and the places of heartbreak and transcendence of now