Just as Wanlaya’s love was no love story, The ghosts is no ghost story, but a love story between Sai Seema, a son of the paddy field lucky enough to study his way into a law office, and Ratchanee, the youngest daughter of a conservative aristocrat lucky enough to study and work her way out of the stifling family cocoon. A parallel love story draws together Ratchanee’s best friend, Kingthian, and a dedicated civil servant. All four come to realize that their future lies with the people. Centred on the conflict between the old aristocratic elite and a new crop of educated intellectuals ready to fight against oppression in the name of progress and a better world, the novel also provides a vivid and still topical account of the plight of the farmers tricked out of their lands by local influential persons. Like Wanlaya’s love, this prophetic work found its public twenty years after its serialization in the early 1950s. To the post-1973 generation, it is the quintessential Thai novel.