Guarded Conversations

This fast-moving parody takes a cheeky inside view of the career of a recent Thai Prime Minister. Guarded Conversations is a 100 page book by Putney Swope, which is a pen-name used by a successful foreign writer residing in Thailand. Featuring alleged private conversations between the former PM and his closest people, the all-dialogue parody listens in on intimate conversations with the man’s former wife, his son, the judge who enabled him to flee the country, and include private conversations he had with his stable of hot-shot attorneys. Additional conversations engage a Thai general, foreign VIP’s and CIA operatives - in order to flesh out the self-aggrandizing ultra-rich and ultra-manipulative man at its center. The reader can decide whether Mister ‘I am through with politics’ was ever out of the game, and to what extent he and his family and friends were entwined with the Red Shirt demonstrations of 2009 and 2010 - in particular, whether the man at the center of the storm was bankrolling the fringe element 'black shirts' run by renegades like Seh Daeng.