The Size of the World: A Novel

The Size of the World is a novel set across wartime Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico, Sicily, and contemporary America. It follows multiple characters—travelers, colonials, immigrants, and returned ex-pats—whose encounters with unfamiliar places and people reshape their understanding of human experience. The narrative opens with an engineer in Vietnam investigating why his company's planes are disappearing. Other storylines include a modern marriage between a Thai Muslim and an American woman that triggers family conflict, a young woman in 1920s Siam observing her brother's colonial attitudes while he prospects for tin, and the brother's later return to the United States, still drawn to Asian women. The novel explores love, loss, yearning, self-delusion, and forgiveness across these interconnected lives. In the tradition of E. M. Forster, exposure to the wider world alters how each character understands home and belonging.