Six years ago a Thai actress suggested to Cambodian reporters that Angkor Wat had been constructed by her ancestral countrymen. The Cambodians responded to her jingoistic theory by torching the Thai embassy and burning a great number of Thai-owned businesses in Phnom Penh to the ground. No one was hurt according to official reports and the embassy was re-built at the expense of the Chinese community. They were the only ones making money.
Worldwide people are sensitive about their national border, traditions, and heritages.
Like the Americans with the Golden Arches.
The Cambodians were rightfully angered by the actress' comments, since Angkor Wat was irrefutably commissioned by Jayavarman, the Buddhist Khmer king, who transformed the caste system of Cam way Cambodians socially themselves and in Geoff Ryman’s novel THE KING’S LAST SONG, the author skillfully married the past with the present for better and worse.
Many western novels written about foreign lands are the tale of a stranger cut loose from his culture but triumphing because he knows how to shoot a gun or call the right phone number. THE LAST KING’S SONG backed away from the formula and interwined a diverse chorus of Cambodian voices such as the ancient king and his wives with a mad French archaeologist to create a symphony of past and present.The dominant voice is that of Map a mad ex-Khmer Rouge madman who murdered the family of a young tourist guide during the Khmer Rouge regime.
Everything read true to the eyes.
Angkor Wat now and then.
The Khmer Rouge stole many of the heads from the temples to finance their civil war. Not all the treasures are gone.
In this tale a UN archaeologist Luc Andrade discovers a Sanskrit book written on gold leaves. The words written by Jayavarman. Things of value don’t last long in the right hands in Cambodia. A theft. A kidnapping. Betrayal. Salvation but not for everyone. The unfolding of mysteries lost to time and the consciousness of a nation willing to forget the horrors of the near past if it protects the glory of history.
The plot remains well-hidden and no one really important dies in the end other than those you expect to deserve it. Although even they get away with a little bit of murder, because that’s the real way of the world.
THE KING’S LAST SONG is the perfect traveler’s companion other than it only took me a day to read it the other day for the second time and I enjoyed as much as the first time I turned its pages.
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