(2015 / 2019, 376 pages)

English edition of True Blue (น้ำเงินแท้ - True Blue) (2015)

Translated by Prisna Boonsinsukh

The transition from absolute monarchy to democracy in Thailand  split the country into two factions.  Barely a year from June 24, 1932 when the People’s Party succeeded in forcing the change in a relatively bloodless revolution, the Boworadej Rebellion erupted into a civil war.  From both sides, hundreds died, but only the losing side ended up, by hundreds more, in prison.

The dark blue prison uniform of Zone 6 in Bang Kwang jail inspired these political prisoners to call themselves the True Blue which subtly underpinned their royalist inclination.  But World War II intervened and they were consigned to the extreme hardship of two successive prison islands of Tarutao and Tao.

The Boworadej rebels were a group consisting of noted intellectuals such as Prince Sithiporn Kridakorn, winner of the Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1967; SO Sethaputra, compiler of the first English-Thai dictionary, his prison magnum opus, which is still one of the most popular dictionaries today; and many others.  Fiction pales in comparison to the real lives of these individuals.

Win Lyovarin’s True Blue is a historical novel that branches out of Democracy, Shaken and Stirred, covering events that mirror so closely the current political situation in Thailand to pose this question: are Thai people capable of learning from the past?