★★★★

This wonderful little book is a reissued classic first published in 1944, which tells a story made famous by the Rogers & Hammerstein musical The King and I. Having neither heard nor seen that musical, I had no real idea of what to expect from this novel. My vague notions that I’d picked up here and there turned out to be completely mistaken and perhaps the result of confusing The King and I with The Sound of Music (musical governesses, you see). This book is not a love story at all, but something far more interesting: the tale of a confrontation between two worlds, two belief systems and two indomitable personalities. Based on Anna Leonowens’s own letters and other documents, it lures the reader into the exotic world of mid-19th-century Siam.

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