Mapped
Four Reigns
Kukrit Pramoj
Through the long life of Mae Phloi, from a girl sent to serve in the royal Inner Court to a grandmother in the Second World War, Kukrit Pramoj tells the story of Siam across the reigns of four kings and its passage from old kingdom to modern nation. Bangkok is the whole book: the Grand Palace and its Inner Court where Phloi grows up, the canal-laced city of the old capital, the Chao Phraya river, and the modernising, then war-shadowed, city of her old age.
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The Beach
Alex Garland
A young backpacker's Thailand: the traveller ghetto of the Khao San Road, then the long haul south to the party islands of the Gulf, and finally a rumoured paradise hidden in a marine park. The map runs from central Bangkok down to Surat Thani and out across the archipelago of Ko Samui, Ko Pha Ngan and Ang Thong, where the secret beach is imagined.
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