The King of Bangkok (Sopranzetti, Fabbri & Natalucci 2021) is a non-fictional graphic novel, based on more than a decade of anthropological research and an attempt to think graphically through ethnography and think ethnographically through comics. The book, which was first published in Italian, then in Thai, and finally in English, tells the story of Nok, an old blind man who sells lottery tickets in Bangkok, as he decides to leave the city and return to his native village. Through reflections on contemporary Bangkok and flashbacks to his past, Nok reconstructs a journey through the slums of migrant workers, the rice fields of northeastern Thailand, the tourist villages of Ko Pha Ngan, and the Red Shirt protests of 2010.

The story narrated in the graphic novel is based on real events. Hundreds of hours of interviews and archival research, filtered through three pairs of eyes and hands, provide the ground for this account. The characters are composite and the product of narrative fiction. Every detail of their lives is real, yet none of them correspond in their totality to an existing person. The social, economic, and historical context in which the characters move summarizes the most significant events in the last fifty years of Thai history, without any claim to exhaustiveness. Some events have been omitted and condensed to make the narration more fluid. On the contrary, the reconstruction of locations, clothes, architecture, and graphic material is fully realistic. Every frame is based on a photographic and cinematographic archive, which the authors put together during a residency in Thailand in 2015, composed of more than 5,000 items from the Bangkok National Library, the National Archive of Thai Cinema, and some private collections.

Following one composite character, The King of Bangkok is a story of migration to the city, distant families in the countryside, economic development eroding the land, and violent political protest. Ultimately, it is a story about contemporary Thailand and how the waves of history lift, engulf, and crash against ordinary people.

In the following pages, you will find an excerpt from the graphic novel and three reflections we wrote about the process of producing the comic, collaborating, making narrative choices, and thinking about what kind of ethnographic theorizing can happen in this graphic form. The first essay is written by Chiara Natalucci and focuses on translation and the challenges of working as an editor. The second one, authored by the visual artist Sara Fabbri, explores iconography, cultural appropriation, colour use, how to represent blindness graphically, and the process of creating a page. Finally, the anthropologist Claudio Sopranzetti reconstructs the genesis of the project and its contribution to ethnography and theory.

《曼谷国王》（Sopranzetti, Fabbri & Natalucci 2021）是一部非虚构的图画小说，基于十多年的人类学研究以及通过民族志进行图形化思考和通过漫画进行民族志化思考的尝试。这本书首先以意大利语出版，然后以泰语出版，最后以英语出版，讲述了在曼谷卖彩票的老盲人 Nok 决定离开这座城市回到家乡的故事。通过对当代曼谷的反思和对他过去的回忆，Nok 重构了一段穿越农民工贫民窟、泰国东北部稻田、帕岸岛旅游村和 2010 年红衫军抗议活动的旅程。

漫画小说中叙述的故事是根据真实事件改编的。数百小时的采访和档案研究，通过三双眼睛和双手过滤，为这个叙述提供了基础。人物是复合的，是叙事小说的产物。他们生活的每一个细节都是真实的，但没有一个在整体上与现有的人相对应。角色移动的社会、经济和历史背景概括了泰国过去五十年历史中最重要的事件，但没有任何详尽无遗的要求。一些事件被省略和浓缩，以使叙述更加流畅。相反，地点、服装、建筑和图形材料的重建是完全真实的。每一帧都基于摄影和电影档案，

继一个复合角色之后，《曼谷国王》讲述了一个关于移民城市、远在农村的家庭、经济发展侵蚀土地和暴力政治抗议的故事。归根结底，这是一个关于当代泰国的故事，以及历史的浪潮如何掀起、吞没和撞击普通人。

在接下来的几页中，您将找到这本图画小说的摘录和我们所写的关于制作漫画、合作、做出叙事选择以及思考在这种图画形式中可以发生什么样的民族志理论的过程的三个反思。第一篇文章由 Chiara Natalucci 撰写，重点关注翻译和编辑工作的挑战。第二个由视觉艺术家 Sara Fabbri 创作，探讨了图像学、文化挪用、颜色使用、如何以图形方式表示失明以及创建页面的过程。最后，人类学家 Claudio Sopranzetti 重建了该项目的起源及其对民族志和理论的贡献。