Many Lives was written by M.R. Kukrit Pramoj and first published in Thai in 1954. Kukrit was a man of many talents and achievements. Educated at Oxford University, he served as a professor at Thammasat University, worked as a journalist, and later became the Prime Minister of Thailand in 1975. He was also a member of the Thai royal family.
The book’s origin is quite remarkable. During a trip with fellow journalists, Kukrit witnessed the aftermath of a tragic bus accident in which several passengers died. Most of these people were strangers to each other and came from very different social backgrounds, yet their lives ended together in the same place and at the same moment. From a Buddhist cosmological perspective, this raises questions about karma, destiny, and what actions in their past lives might have brought them to this shared fate.
Kukrit initially invited a group of journalists to collaborate on a fictional retelling of the event, with each writing about one of the deceased passengers. However, he ultimately wrote all the stories himself.
The result is more than just a collection of short stories. Many Lives seeks to explore the moral and cosmic order behind human existence—fate, karma, merit, and the consequences of one’s actions. It suggests that life’s events are not random but guided by unseen moral and spiritual laws.
The English translation, completed in the late 1990s by Meredith Borthwick, a diplomat who grew up in Thailand and spoke Thai fluently, captures the tone and depth of the original beautifully. The reading experience is fluid and deeply engaging.
Each story portrays a different person from a distinct walk of life: a monk, a bandit, an actor, a prostitute, a rich woman, a poor woman, and others. The book seeks to understand, from a Buddhist viewpoint, how their actions and karmic debts led to their deaths in the same tragic event.
One of my favorite stories is that of Loi. As a baby, he was found abandoned on a riverbank and taken in by a poor, childless woman who raised him by chance. Loi grew up wild and unruly. During his two years of military service, he learned to use weapons and met people who would later influence his life.
Knowing he was abandoned, Loi came to see his life as something gained for free, something he could waste without regret. He became a cruel, amoral man who believed the world owed him and that he had every right to take what he wanted. He joined a gang of bandits and eventually rose to lead them through sheer ruthlessness. He killed without remorse, justifying his violence as revenge for being cast aside as an infant.
In one of his darkest acts, he ordered his gang to rob and murder the very woman who had cared for him as a child. On his way to Bangkok, however, he was killed in an accident. His death seemed to change nothing as his life had already been squandered. Loi once said, “My life is sheer profit,” a line that captures the emptiness of his existence.
Another striking story is that of Lamom, The Daughter, which I hope to discuss further another time.
All these stories share a distinctive quality: the writing is raw and brutal, honest and unflinching. Kukrit’s writing confronts human nature without pretense and describes life with clarity and conviction. It is the kind of storytelling that is rarely seen today — vivid, fearless, and deeply human. Reading Many Lives is both unsettling and deeply satisfying.