Harry Nicolaides is still rotting in a jail cell.
For insulting the royal family.
90 cellmates, an open toilet, and a cement floor.
Makes me want to jump on a plane and tour lovely Bangkok right away, lemme tell you.
Piling on to this poor guy's slumping shoulders are an entire herd of Internet disparagers.
These paragons look to the complete printing (50 copies), and the number of copies sold (7 sold). and write that Nicolaides is suffering from a publicity stunt gone somewhat south.
And that he deserves it.
Who are these people?
Well, there's Chuck. Classy guy, Chuck: "Harry Nicolaides is an attention seeking fool."
Then there's Val1089. Very sympathetic guy, is Val: "Harry is a fool, but not in the way you think he was. The book was never published, and possibly never written. Harry submitted the potentially objectionable passage to the Thai gov't himself to see if it would be lese majeste. It was all a publicity stunt to help sell the novel, before it was published."
He goes on to "wager you won't find a single copy of this book anywhere, nor will you find anyone who has read or seen a copy."
Yep.
A genuine authority, is Val.
A copy of Harry Nicolaides's entire text is here. It's in a pdf that popped back up on the net within the last ten days or so. Apparently it was pulled down as a sign of encouragement to the Thai police department, who were considering releasing Harry.
Harry's still locked up, so the book is back up.
Here's an excerpt from Verisimilitude --one that contains, if not all of the apparently offending words, at least some of them:
"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."
The King's a hypocrite.
He's gone on record as saying people should be able to critize the king.
And yet this sort of thing happens.
Must be good to be a king.
<sigh>
I'm not travelling to Thailand any time soon.
Wonder if the prosecutor is going to file for my extradition?
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