Behind the Painting and Other Stories Spirit The 1997 financial bust in

The 1997 financial bust in Thailand and the fraud

not only lays out the complex array of realms in the Buddhist universe but also ventures into a number of esoteric and little-understood aspects of the Theravāda cosmological system and its inhabitants

Sheds new light on Thailand’s involvement in the Vietnam War

and contemporary Buddhist belief and practice

as well as the relations between Vietnamese in diaspora and their ancestors

Behind the Painting and Other Stories Spirit The 1997 financial bust inTranslated from the Thai and introduced by David Smyth Behind the Painting is the story of Nopphon, a Thai student studying in Japan, who becomes infatuated with the lovely Mom Ratchawong Kirati, an older Thai woman visiting the country with her husband. Their intimacy grows, and by the time the older couple returns to Thailand, Nopphon can barely contain his feelings for her. The novel reflects postwar Thai society in the vanity of the aristocracy