Mom Luang Buppha Nimmanhemin née Kunchon (1905 – 1963), writing under the pen name Dokmai Sot, was the most important Thai woman novelist in the period before World War II.
The second youngest child of Chao Phraya Thewet, a high-ranking official who had 32 children, she was educated at home and at a Catholic convent primary school in Bangkok. When she was five years old, her mother Mom Malai left Chao Phraya Thewet to marry a Western foreigner; Dō̜kmai Sot remained with her father. Her earlier novels were romances but her later work, set in the world of the Thai elite, deals with moral issues in a changing world, based on Buddhist values. In her view, a person's quality was not measured by their social status but by their morality as reflected in their behaviour. She also wrote a number of short stories which are less known than her novels.
In 1954, she married the Thai politician Sukich Nimmanhemin.
Her sister Boonlua Kunchon Thepyasuwan, also a novelist, wrote under the name Boonlua.
Selected works
- Phu Di (A person of good quality), novel (1938)
Notes
- Mom Luang is a title that indicates that she was a great-great-grandchild of a king.
References
- ^ Fry, Gerald W; Nieminen, Gayla S; Smith, Harold E (2013). Historical Dictionary of Thailand. p. 138. ISBN 978-0810875258.
- ^ Kepner, Susan Fulop (1996). The Lioness in Bloom: Modern Thai Fiction about Women. pp. 81–83. ISBN 0520915410.
- Kepner, Susan Fulop (2013). A Civilized Woman: M.L. Boonlua Debyasuvarn and the Thai Twentieth Century. ISBN 978-1630418182.