11 Best Books About Thailand By Both Thai & Western Authors

I’ve been living in Bangkok for two years and it’s taken me just as long to compile this list of the best books about Thailand. Why? Because I didn’t want it to be weighted toward novels set in Thailand by predominantly white, Western authors, yet great Thai literature that resonates in English and is available in good translation is hard to find. (Sadly, even after two years, my Thai is still mostly limited to: “Another beer, please,” “Straight on, then turn left,” and “I am a guava.”)

Of course, why should I expect Thai literature to be so readily available in translation? Way to teach my mono-linguist ass a lesson. It’s fitting, considering that Thailand is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been colonised by Europeans.

And so, this list is a mix of both Thai and Western perspectives on Thailand – a little more like my Hong Kong book list – discussing themes such as the threat of colonisation and the memories of wartime atrocities, to wider Asian influences on Thailand and contemporary issues such as overtourism.

The writers featured are mostly Thai authors with Western backgrounds and Western writers with extensive firsthand experience of living in the country. It’s made for a deliciously multi-faceted account on the complexities of Thailand, unveiling layers that go deeper and deeper, which continue to surprise and educate me as I start my third year living in Bangkok.

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Sightseeing, Rattawut Lapcharoensap (2004)

Sightseeing is a collection of short stories set in Thailand’s modern day. The author is American-Thai writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap, who was only 25 years old when Sightseeing was published.

The tales follow a host of different characters, including families, friends, enemies, lovers and a pig named Clint Eastwood. It’s an insightful and lighthearted introduction to Thailand, discussing Thai culture, Thailand’s place in the world and encroaching Westernisation.

“You give them history, temples, pagodas, traditional dance, floating markets, seafood curry, tapioca desserts, silk-weaving cooperatives, but all they really want is to ride some hulking gray beast like a bunch of wildmen and to pant over girls and to lie there half-dead getting skin cancer on the beach during the time in between.” – From the prize-winning story, “Farangs.”

The Beach, Alex Garland (1996)

Yes, The Beach is on here! I really tried to challenge myself to go beyond The Beach, but – you know what – it’s a bloody good book. And you truly can’t underestimate the effect the book and film adaptation has had on Thai tourism, and the subsequent overtourism of Maya Bay, where filming took place, so it still makes for a poignant read based on context.

The plot follows a young backpacker who leaves England and arrives in Asia, where he hears about a utopian island paradise in the south of Thailand. His quest for the perfect beach and time with a community isolating from the outside world is at first adventurous and idyllic, before things take a dark turn.

“Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is the generation that travels the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite & never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience— And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.”

Bangkok Wakes to Rain, Pitchaya Sudbanthad (2019)

With a Russian-doll structure that has been likened to Cloud Atlas, Bangkok Wakes to Rain is a series of intersecting stories set in Bangkok’s past, present and future. The book is a love letter to the Thai capital and its voices, which are as complex as the sprawling maze of the city’s layout.

This highly-acclaimed book won places on The New York Times’ and The Washington Post’s Best Books of 2019 lists. Its depiction of the city as enduring and ever-changing reminds readers just how much and how fast Bangkok has developed, and leaves us questioning its future.

“I swallowed, not knowing what I drank, medicine or poison; I only knew that I was thirsty. With every drop, I drew in the spirit of oxen and snakes, great jungle beasts ran inside me, growling. I tasted dirt and rubies and thousands of years of rain.”

Anna and the King of Siam, Margaret Landon (1944)

To say this is a controversial choice is an understatement. Anna and the King of Siam is a semi-fictionalized biographical novel by Margaret Landon, based on the life of Anna Leonowens, with content sourced from Leonowens’ published journals and accounts from those who knew her. You may recognize the title, as this is the story on which the musical and film The King and I is based.

Anna came to then-Siam in the 1860s to teach the children and wives of King Mongkut (Rama IV). Landon used Leonowens’ own first-person writings as a base for the plot, but also added other details pooled from external sources about Thailand during that era.

“Most people do not see the world as it is. They see it as they are”

Both the book and the film are banned in Thailand. Thailand has some of the world’s strictest lèse majesté laws and any criticism or perceived criticism of the monarchy results in hefty prison sentences, even if the monarch has passed.

However, a read of this story offers a little window of insight into Thailand’s past, during a turbulent era when its neighbors were becoming European colonies; and also its present, in what can and can’t be said about the royal family.

The Happiness of Kati, Ngarmpun Vejjajiva (2003)

I first came across this title in a bookstore in Chiang Mai. It struck me because the name Kati means coconut milk, which is super-cute and was also the Thai nickname of one of my colleagues.

The story follows a nine-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother and discovers her mother is dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). In going to see her mother, Kati learns the reasons why her mother gave her up and has the opportunity to meet the father she doesn’t know.

“Grandpa said, quite casually that wherever people were, they still looked up at the same moon.”

The Happiness of Kati (the Thai name, The Pleasure of Coconut Milk, is a little more ambiguous) won the S.E.A. Write Award for Thailand in 2006 and was adapted into a film in 2009. It was translated from Thai by Prudence Borthwick.

The Judgement, Chart Korbjitti (1982)

While I was perusing the English section at Passport Bookshop, my favorite bookshop in Bangkok, there was a note attached to this cover that said The Judgement was the number one book the owners recommend for those looking to read a novel by a Thai writer.

I was intrigued and to be honest, it really doesn’t take much persuading for me to buy a book, so I purchased The Judgement and delved in.

At first, I was a little disappointed as the story didn’t really pull me in – a young man looks after his mentally ill stepmother after his father passes away – but I kept at it. The more I read, the more I realised how subtle the story development was; the critique of Thai society, the sideways glances of minor characters, the slow deterioration of the protagonist’s mental health and most poignantly, the importance placed on how individuals are perceived within a community, especially in Thai culture.

The plot rose to a crescendo and even now, I feel the mark the book has left on me – it really made me think.

“We don’t know where we come from. From the moment we are born, we have to struggle to survive, and when we die, it’s all over. We never know where or when we die, and we don’t know either where we go after we die. We go through life like blind men…” – Translation by Phongdeit Jiangphatthana-kit and Marcel Barang.

The Bridge on the River Kwai, Pierre Boulle (1952)

Originally published in French, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a novel by Pierre Boulle (English translation by Xan Fielding) that fictionalises the true story of the construction of the Burma Railway during World War II.

Nicknamed the “Death Railway” for the huge number of POWs and conscripts who died due to the appalling conditions, this novel also draws on Boulle’s own experiences in Southeast Asia during the Second World War.

“During the last war ‘saving face’ was perhaps as vitally important to the British as it was to the Japanese. Perhaps it dictated the behavior of the former, without their being aware of it, as forcibly and fatally as it did that of the latter, and no doubt that of every race in the world. Perhaps the conduct of each of the two enemies, superficially so dissimilar, was in fact simply a different though equally meaningless manifestation of the same spiritual reality. Perhaps the mentality of the Japanese colonel, Saito, was essentially the same as that of his prisoner, Colonel Nicholson.”

The novel was adapted into the film, The Bridge On the River Kwai, which won 1957 Oscar for Best Picture.

Today, you can visit Thailand’s Kanchanaburi, only a few hours from Bangkok, to visit war cemeteries and museums detailing the horrific construction of the Burma-Siam Railway, and even ride along part of the original tracks.

The Sad Part Was, Prabda Yoon (2002)

The Sad Part Was is a collection of 12 short stories by award-winning writer Prabda Yoon, translated into English by Mui Poopoksakul. The dozen tales depict Thailand as a land of contradictions, something I am continually struck by: old vs new, said vs unsaid, conservatism vs sexual exhibitionism, local vs foreign, strictly enforced rules vs those that bend and how they can be.

What’s interesting about Yoon is that he is known for his playful use of language in Thai, and therefore the translation was very intricate, as Poopoksakul had to fashion Thai idioms and metaphors into English wordplay.

The Ramakien (18th century)

The Ramakien is Thailand’s national epic, derived from the Buddhist Dasharatha Jataka, which in turn is believed to have roots in India’s Ramayana. The epic is comprised of a collection of stories based on life of Rama Pandita, who lived roughly in the 7th century BC.

The earliest recordings of the Ramakien date back to Sukhothai Kingdom and the 13th century, in the form of Indonesian-style shadow-puppet theater. The earliest written forms date back to the Ayutthaya Kingdom and the 18th century, though most editions were destroyed by Burmese armies during the invasions of 1767.

To study the Ramakien is to better understand Thai art, culture and history, and you’ll seen scenes and stories from the Ramakien in Thai dramas, temple murals, as well as on the national curriculum of most schools.

Private Dancer, Stephen Leather (2005)

I read Private Dancer in a day, cover to cover, by the pool and I have the sunburn to prove it. It actually falls well into the “white guy arrives in Asia, falls in love with a prostitute” genre, which I normally avoid, but it’s definitely not a colonial-gaze love story. The white guy is not the girl’s savior, the prostitute does not give a shit, every character is fucked up x100, no one is redeemed or redeemable.

This is a sleazy and unromantic noir tale that isn’t afraid to hold Thailand’s sex tourism and corruption up to the light to expose all of its grime. The plot explores the relationships between sex workers and patrons, as well as Thais and Westerners in general, switching between character perspectives and focusing on one particular couple and their doomed “relationship.”

Sometimes these relationships are more complex than you may think – layered with misunderstandings, contradictions and well-disguised motives – and at others times, so frustratingly simple that you’re screaming at the pages when the characters ignore the facts and choose to see only what they want to see.

“Sure, we’re physically bigger and we have more money, but they reckon we’re not much smarter than animals. They call us water buffaloes or monitor lizards. There’s no bigger insult than to say that a person is an animal, and that’s what they think we are.”

A Good True Thai, Sunisa Manning (2020)

This is a bit of an exclusive, as Sunisa Manning’s debut novel, A Good True Thai, has only just been published (September 2020). The plot is set in Thailand during the mid-1970s, a turbulent political time in the country, which is particularly relevant now due to the protests taking place in Thailand today.

I had the chance to attend a book launch event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club here in Bangkok, which included an interview with Manning via video link (she currently resides in the U.S.). The discussion was fascinating, especially in light of current events.

The novel is set during the protest movement of the 1970s; a period of history that was largely covered up in Thailand. Some poetic license has been taken to personalise the story, based on true events, through three central student-aged characters from very different backgrounds: Det (descended from royalty), Chang (a commoner), and Lek (a Chinese immigrant).

“Good true Thais encouraged the fantasy, the deception. It kept the Kingdom free.”

Interestingly, Manning also talked to the fact that there isn’t a lot of Thai literature available in English and by writing this “decolonising work,” she wanted to provide something authentic that doesn’t objectify the country, and gives voice to a subject that isn’t spoken much about.

More Books About Thailand

An honorable mention goes to Forget You Had a Daughter by Sandra Gregory. This is an autobiographical account of Gregory’s arrest in Thailand for drug possession, the first four years of her 25-year sentence in a Thai prison, then her transfer to a prison back in her home country, the UK. Though not an authentically Thai work of literature, the memoir makes for a fascinating, if terrifying, read, and was supposedly the inspiration for Bridget Jones’ stint in a Thai prison in The Edge of Reason.

Another nod goes to Thailand At Random: a book of random facts and figures about Thailand, which is lighthearted, entertaining and a good coffee table book to dip in and out of. I’d recommend this for newcomers to the country, as it gives a good overview of what makes Thailand tick.

Finally, there are some additional Thai authors that I’ve heard great things about, but haven’t read their works of as of yet: Soni Saowaptong, S. P. Somtow and Jirat Prasertsup all come highly recommended, while Sunthorn Phu is dubbed the “Shakespeare of Thailand” and a visit to Bangkok’s Wat Thepthidaram offers insight into the poet’s life.