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The Fate of Rural Hell (Hardcover, New)
Price: R137
Discovery Miles 1 370
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The Fate of Rural Hell (Hardcover, New)
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Price R137
Discovery Miles 1 370
Expected to ship within 2 - 4 working days
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In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat
Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived
by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a
demented Disneyland. One of the world's most bizarre tourist
attractions, Wat Phai Rong Wua was designed as a cautionary museum
of sorts; its gruesome statues depict violent and torturous scenes
that showcase what hell may be like. Over the next few decades,
Anderson found himself transfixed by this unusual amalgamation of
objects, returning several times to see attractions like the
largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a
Hundred Spires. The concrete statuary and perverse art in Luang
Phor's personal museum of hell included, side by side, an upright
human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of
Michelangelo's gigantic nude "David", wearing fashionable red
underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen,
un-Florentine penis, alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being
ferociously punished in their afterlife. In "The Fate of Rural
Hell", Anderson unravels the intrigue of this strange setting,
endeavoring to discover what compels so many Thai visitors to
travel to this popular spectacle and what order, if any, inspired
its creation. At the same time, he notes in Wat Phai Rong Wua the
unexpected effects of the gradual advance of capitalism into the
far reaches of rural Asia. Both a one-of-a-kind travelogue and a
penetrating look at the community that sustains this unlikely
tourist destination, "The Fate of Rural Hell" is sure to intrigue
and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.
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