![]() ![]() ![]() It is often tempting to engage with the writing rather than the atrocities that it attempts to describe. In one two-page chapter, the first days of Pol Pot’s rule are recreated – an imagined Year Zero: “Banks. ![]() Yet it is the novel’s highly concentrated narrative style that takes centre stage, at times overshadowing even the horrifying details of the Khmer Rouge regime. Swiftly, she becomes absorbed into his world and his past, but already there are obstacles, for her father is vehemently opposed to her new lover (there is a memorably terse exchange between Papa and Serey on the difference between an immigrant and an exile). Anne is “drawn to the gloom and glory” of his exile she, too, wants an exotic past. But underneath this heady young relationship there is a more complex cultural dynamic at work. When they are not making love, they sit in a small room listening to “Khmer rockabilly and surf and soul and two-stringed and four-stringed guitars and Farfisa electric organs and rock drumming” and lyrics Anne does not understand. ![]() Much of Anne and Serey’s early time together involves exuberant youthful passion, lovingly recorded. ![]()
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