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In the Shadow of Angkor: A Search for Cambodian Literature

“You know, there is no tradition of the Western novel in Cambodia.” The man who declares this—an American journalist I have met my first morning back in Phnom Penh—speaks with such conviction that if I did not know better, I might believe him and be tempted to head right back to the United States. Instead, I stare at him in shock and a dizzy fatigue born of jet lag and the euphoria of being in Cambodia again. I haven’t slept in seventy-two hours and can hardly speak, except to explain to him that I am looking for contemporary Cambodian writing, including novel excerpts, for a special issue of Mänoa, a journal published by the University of Hawai‘i Press. He continues, “It’s just not a very literate culture.” If I wasn’t so tired, I would tell him that the modern novel appeared in Cambodia in the late 1930s and that over a thousand were published between 1950 and 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took over. I would say that you could ask almost any Cambodian educated before 1975 about the novels taught in school, and he or she would likely recall The Rose of Pailan, The Waters of Tonle Sap, Sophat, The Wilted Flower. I imagine they would name these books with a thinly disguised yearning and then laugh, saying they didn’t have time to read anymore. If I wasn’t so tired, I would ask the journalist if he knew the Khmer term for novel, pralomlok, and its literal meaning: a story that is written to seduce the hearts of human beings. But I say nothing and continue to stare at him dumbfounded. As the journalist turns on the front steps to leave, I show him a copy of Secret Places, the issue of Mänoa with writing from Nepal. “Well,” he says, “I think the Cambodia book will be rather slimmer than that.”