Claudio Sopranzetti

EthnoGRAPHIC Thailand
Review of the University of Toronto Press paperback (August 2021) translated by Chiara Natalucci from the Italian language original "Il re di bangkok" (April 2019)

The King of Bangkok is based on anthropologist Claudio Sopranzetti's long time research in Thailand centred around rural migrant labour and activism. The story uses a fictionalized protagonist Nok with his family of wife Gai and son Sun and his friend Hong. The stories told are non-fiction and are based on real life events. It spans 30 years of recent Thai history and is told in flashbacks by a present day Nok relating how he first came to Bangkok from his farming village in Northern Thailand and worked in various jobs in the South in order to send money home. The story culminates in the activism of the Thailand Red Shirt movement, and especially the resultant 2010 crackdown by the Thai military.

See photograph at https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.6375d600d442b65a2499becd229586c4?rik=1GZWP00hVm3EOA&...
A view of the main railroad station in Bangkok, a stylized graphic version of which is used for the cover image of "The King of Bangkok". Image sourced from Thailand Travellers Blogspot.

The graphic novel was inventively drawn by artist Sara Fabbri in a stylized manner which did still allow for easy identification of the lead character. A framing device was used of separating the story into 5 chapters, each symbolized by the final 5 lottery tickets that Nok has to sell before finally returning to his home village.

The book is enhanced by a very thorough Appendix section which contains a historic timeline, an interview with the authors, a reading guide and a recommended further reading list. Although Thailand has gone through various periods of military dictatorships, the most recent parliamentary democracy has allowed for less censorship, so that The King of Bangkok was released in Thai as ตาสว่าง (2020) (The Thai title translates as "Bright Eyes", a Thai expression for one's political awakening) with only a minimal amount of text being redacted (3 lines which could have been interpreted as being critical of the monarchy, a crime in Thailand).

Trivia and Links
You can preview the first 27 pages of The King of Bangkok at its University of Toronto EthnoGRAPHIC webpage (see under "Preview This Book").

The King of Bangkok is part of the University of Toronto Press's EthnoGRAPHIC Series.
This groundbreaking series realizes ethnographic research in graphic novel form. The series speaks to a growing interest in comics as a powerful narrative medium and to the desire for a more creative and collaborative anthropology that engages with the public on contemporary issues. Books in the series are informed by scholarship and combine text and images in ways that are accessible, open-ended, aesthetically rich, and that foster greater cross-cultural understanding.
Other books in the series are:
Forecasts: A Story of Weather and Finance at the Edge of Disaster (not yet published, expected May 2023)
Messages from Ukraine (2022)
The King of Bangkok (2021)
Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning (2020)
Gringo Love: Stories of Sex Tourism in Brazil (2020)
Things That Art: A Graphic Menagerie of Enchanting Curiosity (2019)
Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution (2017)… (altro)