The fate of rural hell - Benedict R. O'G Anderson

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, who is best known for his work, Imagined Communities,
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 statuaries 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 it, The Fate of Rural Hell is sure to intrigue and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.