สี่แผ่นดิน, คึกฤทธิ์ ปราโมช
A sprawling walk down memory lane, as Kukrit Pramoj, scholar, politician, and one-time Prime Minister of Thailand, recounts the lives of a family of minor courtiers over the reigns of four Thai kings (whence the title).
In its early parts, I found the book particularly captivating as Pramoj describes the ins and outs of life in a Bangkok now long unknown to us. The Thai court and its customs, but also the everyday life of a family from the 1880s to 1946, in the "Venice of the Orient" whose canals give way to motorcars. As the book moves forward into more recent and familiar territory, it becomes a remarkable testament to the enormous changes Thailand has experienced in a very short period.
I delighted in the minutiae of old Thai customs and royal traditions, without ever feeling that these got in the way of the plot or the character development. I found the translation, however, very uneven. In places, it's really quite masterful, dealing deftly with many Thai-language intricacies such as its complex personal naming conventions and old royal traditions. In other cases, awkward translations or lengthy explanations in brackets bog down an otherwise airy text.
In all, a great historical record of a country stepping into modernity.
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