14 Facts About Kulap Saipradit

Kulap Saipradit, better known by the pen name Siburapha, was a newspaper editor and one of the foremost Thai novelists of his time.

Kulap Saipradit was a vocal activist for human rights and because of this, he ran afoul of the authorities and was jailed for more than four years.

Kulap Saipradit spent the last 16 years of his life in exile in China.

Kulap Saipradit's father died when he was very young, and his mother, a dressmaker, and sister, a classical dancer, worked hard to fund his education.

In 1934, Kulap Saipradit spent three months in retreat as a bhikkhu.

Kulap Saipradit wrote a religious novel, Facing Sin.

Kulap Saipradit later became the translator of three of Jane Austen's novels under the pen name "Juliet", and helped him to translate Pool by W Somerset Maugham as well as Anton Chekhov's In Exile and Maxim Gorky's Mother.

In early 1936, Kulap Saipradit was forced to resign from his work as a journalist.

In 1944 and 1945, Kulap Saipradit was elected president of the Thai Newspaper Association.

Kulap Saipradit wrote several books, including Till We Meet Again.

In 1951, during the second premiership of dictatorial Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram, Kulap Saipradit set up the Peace Foundation of Thailand.

In 1958, Kulap Saipradit headed a delegation of writers to China.

Kulap Saipradit contributed to the Afro-Asian Solidarity Front's cultural activities and to the Thai service of China's broadcasting radio.

Kulap Saipradit died in China of complications resulting from pleurisy on 16 June 1974.