We have included publishers’ details for books that may be hard to find outside Thailand, though some of them can be ordered online through 
dcothai.com, which sells e-books on ebooks.dco.co.th. Other titles should be available worldwide. Titles marked 
are particularly recommended. There’s a good selection of Thai novels and short stories in translation, available to buy as e-books, on thaifiction.com.
Travelogues
Carl Bock Temples and Elephants (Orchid Press, Bangkok). Nineteenth-century account of a rough journey from Bangkok to the far north, dotted with vivid descriptions of rural life and court ceremonial.
Karen Connelly Touch the Dragon. Evocative and humorous journal of an impressionable Canadian teenager, sent on an exchange programme to Den Chai in northern Thailand for a year.
Charles Nicholl Borderlines. Entertaining adventures and dangerous romance in the “Golden Triangle” form the core of this slightly hackneyed traveller’s tale, interwoven with stimulating and well-informed cultural diversions.
James O’Reilly and Larry Habegger (eds) Travelers’ Tales: Thailand. Absorbing anthology of contemporary writings about Thailand, by Thailand experts, social commentators, travel writers and first-time visitors.
Steve Van Beek Slithering South (Wind and Water, Hong Kong). An expat writer tells how he single-handedly paddled his wooden boat down the entire 1100km course of the Chao Phraya River, and reveals a side of Thailand that’s rarely written about in English.
Tom Vater Beyond the Pancake Trench: Road Tales from the Wild East. Adventures, insights and encounters on the margins of twenty-first-century Thailand. Also covers Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and India.
Culture and society
Michael Carrithers The Buddha: A Very Short Introduction. Accessible account of the life of the Buddha, and the development and significance of his thought.
Philip Cornwel-Smith and John Goss Very Thai. Why do Thais decant their soft drinks into plastic bags, and how does one sniff-kiss? Answers and insights aplenty in this intriguingly observant, fully illustrated guide to contemporary Thai culture. In a similar vein is Very Bangkok.
James Eckardt Bangkok People. The collected articles of a renowned expat journalist, whose encounters with a varied cast of Bangkokians – from construction-site workers and street vendors to boxers and political candidates – add texture and context to the city.
Sandra Gregory with Michael Tierney Forget You Had a Daughter: Doing Time in the “Bangkok Hilton” – Sandra Gregory’s Story. The frank and shocking account of a young British woman’s term in Bangkok’s notorious Lard Yao prison after being caught trying to smuggle 89g of heroin out of Thailand.
Roger Jones Culture Smart! Thailand. Handy little primer on Thailand’s social and cultural mores, with plenty of refreshingly up-to-date insights.
Erich Krauss Wave of Destruction: One Thai Village and Its Battle with the Tsunami. A sad and often shocking, clear-eyed account of what Ban Nam Khem went through before, during and after the tsunami. Fills in many gaps left unanswered by news reports at the time.
Elaine and Paul Lewis Peoples of the Golden Triangle. Hefty, exhaustive work illustrated with excellent photographs, describing every aspect of hill-tribe life.
Father Joe Maier Welcome to the Bangkok Slaughter-house: The Battle for Human Dignity in Bangkok’s Bleakest Slums and The Open Gate of Mercy. Catholic priest Father Joe shares the stories of some of the Bangkok street kids and slum-dwellers that his charitable foundation has been supporting since 1972.
Trilok Chandra Majupuria Erawan Shrine and Brahma Worship in Thailand (Tecpress, Bangkok). The most concise introduction to the complexities of Thai religion, with a much wider scope than the title implies.
Cleo Odzer Patpong Sisters. An American anthropologist’s funny and touching account of her life with the prostitutes and bar girls of Bangkok’s notorious red-light district.
Phra Peter Pannapadipo Little Angels: The Real-Life Stories of Twelve Thai Novice Monks. A dozen young boys, many of them from desperate backgrounds, tell the often poignant stories of why they became novice monks. For some, funding from the Students Education Trust has changed their lives.
Phra Peter Pannapadipo Phra Farang: An English Monk in Thailand. Behind the scenes in a Thai monastery: the frank, funny and illuminating account of a UK-born former businessman’s life as a Thai monk.
Pasuk Phongpaichit and Sungsidh Piriyarangsan Corruption and Democracy in Thailand. Fascinating academic study, revealing the nuts and bolts of corruption in Thailand and its links with all levels of political life, and suggesting a route to a stronger society. Their sequel, a study of Thailand’s illegal economy, Guns, Girls, Gambling, Ganja, co-written with Nualnoi Treerat, makes equally eye-opening and depressing reading.
Denis Segaller Thai Ways. Fascinating collection of short pieces on Thai customs and traditions written by a long-term English resident of Bangkok.
Pira Sudham People of Esarn. Wry and touching, potted life stories of villagers who live in, leave and return to the poverty-stricken northeast, compiled by a northeastern lad turned author.
Phil Thornton Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the Thai–Burma Border. An Australian journalist brings to light the terrible and complicated plight of the Karen, thousands of whom live as refugees in and around his adopted town of Mae Sot on the Thai–Myanmar border.
Richard Totman The Third Sex: Kathoey – Thailand’s Ladyboys. As several kathoey share their life stories with him, social scientist Totman examines their place in modern Thai society and explores the theory, supported by Buddhist philosophy, that kathoey are members of a third sex whose transgendered make-up is predetermined from birth.
Tom Vater and Aroon Thaewchatturat Sacred Skin. Fascinating, beautifully photographed exploration of Thailand’s spirit tattoos, sak yant.
William Warren Living in Thailand. Luscious gallery of traditional houses, with an emphasis on the homes of Thailand’s rich and famous; seductively photographed by Luca Invernizzi Tettoni.
Daniel Ziv and Guy Sharett Bangkok Inside Out. This A–Z of Bangkok quirks and cultural substrates is full of slick photography and sparky observations but was deemed offensive by Thailand’s Ministry of Culture, so some Thai bookshops won’t stock it.
History
Anna Leonowens The English Governess at the Siamese Court. The mendacious memoirs of the nineteenth-century English governess that inspired the infamous Yul Brynner film The King and I; low on accuracy, high on inside-palace gossip.
Chang Noi Jungle Book: Thailand’s Politics, Moral Panic and Plunder 1996–2008 (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai). A fascinating, often humorous, selection of columns about Thailand’s political and social jungle, by “Little Elephant”, an anonymous foreign resident, which first appeared in The Nation newspaper.
Michael Smithies Old Bangkok. Brief, anecdotal history of the capital’s early development, emphasizing what remains to be seen of bygone Bangkok.
John Stewart To the River Kwai: Two Journeys – 1943, 1979. A survivor of the horrific World War II POW camps along the River Kwai returns to the region, interlacing his wartime reminiscences with observations on how he feels 36 years later.
William Warren Jim Thompson: the Legendary American of Thailand. The engrossing biography of the ex-intelligence agent, art collector and Thai silk magnate whose disappearance in Malaysia in 1967 has never been satisfactorily resolved.
Thongchai Winichakul Siam Mapped. Intriguing, seminal account of how Rama V, under pressure on his borders from Britain and France at the turn of the twentieth century, in effect colonized his own country, which was then a loose hierarchy of city-states.
David K. Wyatt Thailand: A Short History. An excellent treatment, scholarly but highly readable, with a good eye for witty, telling details. Good chapters on the story of the Thais before they reached what’s now Thailand, and on more recent developments. The same author’s Siam in Mind (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai) is a wide-ranging and intriguing collection of sketches and short reflections that point towards an intellectual history of Thailand.
Art, architecture and film
Jean Boisselier The Heritage of Thai Sculpture. Expensive but accessible, seminal tome by influential French art historian.
Susan Conway Thai Textiles. A fascinating, richly illustrated work which draws on sculptures and temple murals to trace the evolution of Thai weaving techniques and costume styles, and to examine the functional and ceremonial uses of textiles.
Sumet Jumsai Naga: Cultural Origins in Siam and the West Pacific. Wide-ranging discussion of water symbols in Thailand and other parts of Asia, offering a stimulating mix of art, architecture, mythology and cosmology.
Bastian Meiresonne (ed) Thai Cinema (asiexpo.com). Anthology of twenty short essays on Thai cinema up to 2006, published to accompany a film festival in France, including pieces on art house, shorts and censorship. In French and English.
Steven Pettifor Flavours: Thai Contemporary Art. Takes up the baton from Poshyananda (see below) to look at the newly invigorated art scene in Thailand from 1992 to 2004, with profiles of 23 leading lights, including painters, multimedia and performance artists.
Apinan Poshyananda Modern Art In Thailand. Excellent introduction which extends up to the early 1990s, with very readable discussions on dozens of individual artists, and lots of colour plates.
Dome Sukwong and Sawasdi Suwannapak A Century of Thai Cinema. Full-colour history of the Thai film industry and the promotional artwork (billboards, posters, magazines and cigarette cards) associated with it.
Steve Van Beek The Arts of Thailand. Lavishly produced and perfectly pitched introduction to the history of Thai architecture, sculpture and painting, with superb photographs by Luca Invernizzi Tettoni.
William Warren and Luca Invernizzi Tettoni Arts and Crafts of Thailand. Good-value large-format paper-back, setting the wealth of Thai arts and crafts in cultural context, with plenty of attractive illustrations and colour photographs.
Natural history and ecology
Ashley J. Boyd and Collin Piprell Diving in Thailand. A thorough guide to 84 dive sites, plus general introductory sections on Thailand’s marine life, conservation and photo-graphy tips.
Boonsong Lekagul and Philip D. Round Guide to the Birds of Thailand. Unparalleled illustrated guide to Thailand’s birds. Worth scouring secondhand sellers for.
Craig Robson A Field Guide to the Birds of Thailand. Expert and beautifully illustrated guide to Thailand’s top. bird species, with locator maps.
Eric Valli and Diane Summers The Shadow Hunters. Beautifully photographed photo-essay on the bird’s-nest collectors of southern Thailand, with whom the authors spent over a year, together scaling the phenomenal heights of the sheer limestone walls.
Literature
Alastair Dingwall (ed) Traveller’s Literary Companion: Southeast Asia. A useful though rather dry reference, with a large section on Thailand, including a book list, well-chosen extracts, biographical details of authors and other literary notes.
M.L. Manich Jumsai Thai Ramayana (Chalermnit, Bangkok). Slightly stilted, abridged prose translation of King Rama I’s version of the epic Hindu narrative, full of gleeful descriptions of bizarre mythological characters and supernatural battles. Essential reading for a full appre-ciation of Thai painting, carving and classical dance.
Chart Korbjitti The Judgement (Howling Books). Sobering modern-day tragedy about a good-hearted Thai villager who is ostracized by his hypocritical neighbours. Contains lots of interesting details on village life and tradi-tions, and thought-provoking passages on the stifling conservatism of rural communities. Winner of the S.E.A. Write Award in 1982.
Rattawut Lapcharoensap Sightseeing. This outstanding debut collection of short stories by a young Thai-born author now living overseas highlights big, pertinent themes – cruelty, corruption, racism, pride – in its neighbourhood tales of randy teenagers, bullyboys, a child’s friendship with a Cambodian refugee, a young man who uses family influence to dodge the draft.
Nitaya Masavisut (ed) The S.E.A. Write Anthology of Thai Short Stories and Poems (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai). Interesting medley of short stories and poems by Thai writers who have won Southeast Asian Writers’ Awards, providing a good introduction to the contemporary literary scene.
Kukrit Pramoj Si Phaendin: Four Reigns (Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai). A kind of historical romance spanning the four reigns of Ramas V to VIII (1892–1946). Written by former prime minister Kukrit Pramoj, the story has become a modern classic in Thailand, made into films, plays and TV dramas, with heroine Ploi as the archetypal feminine role model.
S.P. Somtow Jasmine Nights. An engaging and humorous rites-of-passage tale, of an upper-class boy learning what it is to be Thai. Dragon’s Fin Soup and Other Modern Siamese Fables is an imaginative and entertaining collection of often supernatural short stories, focusing on the collision of East and West.
Khamsing Srinawk The Politician and Other Stories. A collection of brilliantly satiric short stories, full of pithy moral observation and biting irony, which capture the vulnerability of peasant farmers in the north and northeast, as they try to come to grips with the modern world. Written by an insider from a peasant family, who was educated at Chulalongkorn University, became a hero of the left, and joined the commu-nist insurgents after the 1976 clampdown.
Atsiri Thammachoat Of Time and Tide (Thai Modern Classics). Set in a fishing village near Hua Hin, this poetically written novella looks at how Thailand’s fishing industry is changing, charting the effects on its fisherfolk and their communities.
Klaus Wenk Thai Literature – An Introduction (White Lotus, Bangkok). Dry, but useful, short overview of the last seven hundred years by a noted German scholar, with plenty of extracts.
Thailand in foreign literature
Dean Barrett Kingdom of Make-Believe. Despite the clichéd ingredients – the Patpong go-go bar scene, opium smuggling in the Golden Triangle, Vietnam veterans – this novel about a return to Thailand following a twenty-year absence turns out to be a rewardingly multi-dimensional take on the farang experience.
Mischa Berlinski Fieldwork. Anthropology versus evangelism, a battle played out over an imaginary hill tribe in the hills of Chiang Rai by a fascinating cast of characters, as wrily and vividly told by its narrator.
Botan Letters from Thailand. Probably the best intro-duction to the Chinese community in Bangkok, presented in the form of letters written over a twenty-year period by a Chinese emigrant to his mother. Branded as both anti-Chinese and anti-Thai, this 1969 prize-winning book is now mandatory reading in school social studies’ classes.
Pierre Boulle The Bridge Over the River Kwai. The World War II novel that inspired the David Lean movie and kicked off the Kanchanaburi tourist industry.
John Burdett Bangkok 8. Riveting Bangkok thriller that takes in Buddhism, plastic surgery, police corruption, the yaa baa drugs trade, hookers, jade smuggling and the spirit world.
Alex Garland The Beach. Gripping cult thriller (later made into a film, shot partly on Ko Phi Phi Leh) that uses a Thai setting to explore the way in which travellers’ ceaseless quest for “undiscovered” utopias inevitably leads to them despoiling the idyll.
Andrew Hicks Thai Girl. A British backpacker falls for a reticent young beach masseuse on Ko Samet but struggles with age-old cross-cultural confusion in this sensitive attempt at a different kind of expat novel.
Michel Houellebecq Platform. Sex tourism in Thailand provides the nucleus of this brilliantly provocative (some would say offensive) novel, in which Houellebecq presents a ferocious critique of Western decadence and cultural colonialism, and of radical Islam too.
Christopher G. Moore God of Darkness. Thailand’s best-selling expat novelist sets his most intriguing thriller during the economic crisis of 1997 and includes plenty of meat on endemic corruption and the desperate struggle for power within family and society.
Darin Strauss Chang & Eng. An intriguing, imagined autobiography of the famous nineteenth-century Siamese twins, from their impoverished Thai childhood via the freak shows of New York and London to married life in small-town North Carolina. Unfortunately marred by lazy research and a confused grasp of Thai geography and culture.
Food and cookery
Vatcharin Bhumichitr The Taste of Thailand. Another glossy introduction to this eminently photogenic country, this time through its food. The author runs a Thai restaurant in London and provides background colour as well as about 150 recipes adapted for Western kitchens.
Jacqueline M. Piper Fruits of South-East Asia. An exploration of the bounteous fruits of the region, tracing their role in cooking, medicine, handicrafts and rituals. Well illustrated with photos, watercolours and early botanical drawings.
David Thompson Thai Food and Thai Street Food. Comprehensive, impeccably researched celebrations of the cuisine with hundreds of recipes, by the owner of the first Thai restaurant ever to earn a Michelin star.
Travel Guides
Oliver Hargreave Exploring Phuket & Phi Phi: From Tin to Tourism. Fascinating, thoroughly researched guide to the Andaman coast’s big touristic honeypots; especially good on Phuket’s history.
Thom Henley Krabi: Caught in the Spell – A Guide to Thailand’s Enchanted Province (Thai Nature Education, Phuket). Highly readable features and observations on the attractions and people of south Thailand’s most beautiful region, written by an expat environmentalist.
Dawn F. Rooney Ancient Sukhothai. Lively and beautifully photographed full-colour guide to the ruins of the northern plains: Sukhothai, Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet.
William Warren Bangkok. An engaging portrait of the unwieldy capital, weaving together anecdotes and character sketches from Bangkok’s past and present.