Trapped. The amazing story of the boys rescued from the Thai cave.
Original title: Pris au piège. L’incroyable histoire des enfants survivants de la grotte thaïlandaise
Trapped. The amazing story of the boys rescued from the Thai cave.
Original title: Pris au piège. L’incroyable histoire des enfants survivants de la grotte thaïlandaise
- 2 Seas Represents: World Excl French.
- English sample available
- Graphic novel adaptation to be published March 2019, approx. 120 pp.
NARRATIVE NON-FICTION
A worldwide first with exclusive information on the unprecedented rescue operation that involved 10,000 volunteers from all over Thailand and the rest of the globe. The book blends spirituality, adventure, solidarity, folktales and legends.
On June 23, 2018, the Boars soccer team from northern Thailand — 12 children, aged 11 through 16, and their 25-year-old coach — disappeared into the Tham Luang cave, one of the biggest and most mysterious caves in the country. After 10 days, the unprecedented rescue operation, which involved 10,000 volunteers from all over Thailand and the globe, found the 13 missing people alive, in a cavern, where they had taken refuge, three kilometers from the entrance. It took another eight days for foreign divers — the most experienced in the world — to safely transport the children and their coach out of the cave, risking their own lives in the process.
In a dozen chapters, journalist, photographer and author Thierry Falise, who has lived in Thailand for 30 years, examines the highlights of the story from two perspectives: that of the children who managed to hold on without food and in total darkness thanks, most notably, to meditation; and that of the massive international rescue operation that came together outside the cave over several days despite the pouring rain. In this book, which reads like a screenplay, he brings the protagonists to life: the children, their coach, their parents, the foreign rescue workers, the Elon Musk fiasco, a prophetic monk, the provincial governor, a Thai diver who lost his life in the cave, and many more.
As a regional specialist, Thierry Falise also situates the event in its geographic and cultural context. The cave sits at the heart of the celebrated Golden Triangle — a vast territory that covers parts of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. Its mountains are home to animist minorities as well as to a robust drug trafficking network.
