Married to the Demon King

"This is a book about love and marriage in contemporary Thailand," declares the preface of this charming book. The volume is ingeniously built around six short stories called "Tales of the Demon Folk" by Sri Daoruang, one of Thailand's leading fiction writers. With striking creativity, Sri Daoruang has placed the familiar characters of the Ramakian, the Thai epic based on the Indian Ramayana, within the Bangkok of today. By re-envisioning their relationships and adventures, she portrays husband and wife relations in Thai society, cloaked in the comforting garments of myth and laced wit the kind of humor readers appreciate most--ironic, sarcastic, earthy, and compassionate. Translator Susan F. Kepner makes these tales available for the first time to English-language readers. She introduces the tales with a lively discussion of the writer and her context, retells the plotline of the classical Ramakian, and then presents the translated tales, in which the demon king, contrary to expectation, is a most gentle and endearing demon. Finally, she reveals the humor embedded in these tales of family life, and in Sida's, or Everywoman's, marriage to the demon king.