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24 January 2009

If the bankers start saying sorry, then we’ll have to forgive them. It’s much too soon

Three years over a fictional rumour, and no publication across the globe will tell you what this fictional rumour was. CNN wouldn’t broadcast it. The BBC kept it vague. Somebody must know. The seventh and final copy of Verisimilitude, I gather, is still on a shelf in the Thai National Library. Couldn’t somebody go and look it up?

When the Ayatollah issued his fatwa against Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, at least it was possible to find out what his problem was. The situation seems more reminiscent of the fuss about those Danish cartoons of Mohammed a few years ago. Only I’m pretty sure that newspapers would not be targeted by mobs of suicidally angry Thai monarchists. So? Are networks and newspapers worried that their Thai correspondents will be jailed? Is there some sort of plush media convention on in Bangkok this summer? Or is it simply that the book is so bad that nobody can get beyond page 114? I really want to know.

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Alex Tocilescu

January 22nd, 2009 2:05pm Report this comment

Mr. Rifkind, some kind soul has scanned the whole book and put it on the internet (probably illegaly, though). You can find it here:

http://psydj.tv/text/verisimilitude-harry-nicolaides.pdf

And this is the infamous passage:
"From King Rama to the Crown Prince, the nobility was renowned for their romantic entanglements and intrigues. The Crown Prince had many wives - major and minor - with a coterie of concubines for entertainment. One of his recent wives was exiled with her entire family, including a son they conceived together, for an undisclosed indiscretion. He subsequently remarried with another woman and fathered another child. It was rumoured that if the prince fell in love with one of his minor wives and she betrayed him, she and her family would disappear with their name, familial lineage and all vestiges of their existence expunged forever".

Bryan Lindsay

January 28th, 2009 12:33am Report this comment

Dear Mr. Rifkind,
Poor Harry Nicolaides, he really is a loser! The comments on page 115 about the "Crown Prince" are common knowledge here in Bangkok, at least among the chattering classes (yes, we have them too!) Unfortunately, he didn't realise the need for discretion in such matters.

We must all hope that a pardon will soon be granted to Harry and to the others presently incarcerated for similar "offences", and that the authorities will see sense and drop the increasing number of lese majeste cases piling up in the courts

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