Four Reigns

Many Lives (Lai Chiwit) depicts the traditional Thai way of life already fast vanishing in the fifties. His longest book, Four Reigns (Si Phaen Din), reworks this motif in a wider setting. Unfolding from the closing years of the last century through till the mid-1940s, it begins by interweaving scenes from the lives of minor courtiers under the absolute monarchy of the day and their relationships through their extended families with the wider society beyond the palace walls. It develops this theme by following the same characters, the dynamics of their marriages and the upbringing of their children, carrying us on down through the decades of ever-changing social and political conditions in Bangkok, showing people striving to cope with the impingement of the international geopolitical struggles of the day on their own formerly more self-enclosed economy and culture.