The Bunnag clan from the inside

Bunnag may be the best-known surname in Thailand because of the size of the clan, its historical role, and the name’s blessed two-syllable brevity. The resounding title of this book suggests a grand tale of the clan marching through history. Not so. This is an intensely personal account of one person refinding himself in the shadow of the past.

Shane Bunnag is an artist, photographer and filmmaker, or essentially a visual man. Here, he writes in prose but uses words like a painter. The blank spaces contribute to the picture as well as colours. The sequence of the story is scattered like scenes of a mural painting. The meaning of the work is conjured by alchemy in the mind of the reader and…