One of Thailand’s best-known and most highly regarded novels, portraying the romance of a young Thai man and a married older woman Nopporn, a Thai student studying in Japan, is tasked with hosting a distinguished old family friend and his new wife, the beautiful, aristocratic Kirati. Despite their difference in age and status, and the social constraints of the day, Nopporn and Kirati are inexorably drawn to each other. A stirring portrayal of youthful romantic obsession, and later attempts to come to terms with the frailty of once-passionate feelings, Behind the Painting also affords an intimate insight into the sterile existence endured by many women of high social status at the time. First published in 1937, the novel has been reprinted more than fifty times in Thailand and has twice been adapted for film as well as a musical.
