I planned long time to introduce Cambodian films and books about Cambodia. I have read and watched many of them.
We just need a good time to write them down and put them on a page where it could give easy access to those who want to read more, learn more and watch more about Cambodia.
Today I want to introduce River Of Time, a book by Jon Swain, a British journalist who arrived in Indo-China in 1970 to cover the war for the Agence France-Presse news agency. Swain spent five years in Cambodia and South Vietnam as a war correspondent.
Swain’s reporting of the fall of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 won him the prestigious British Press Awards’ Journalist of the Year.
His story has also been told in the film “The Killing Field”. He wrote everything about his arrival in Phnom Penh in 1970 and what he loves about Indo-China, especially Cambodia.
He wrote:
Indo-China is a like a beautiful woman. She overwhelms you and you never quite understand why. Sometimes a man can lose his heart to a place, one that lures him back again and again.
I am also sad when I read this phrase from his book:
Even today, after years of suffering, the Cambodians do not have a strong sense of caring for their fellow men.
But I like the book and I am not alone who have enjoyed reading the true and well-described memoir of Jon Swain.
These are the few testimonials of the book:
“A brilliant and unsettling examination of the age-old bonds between death, beauty, violence, and the imagination, which came together in Vietnam as nowhere else.” - J. G. Ballard, Sunday Times
” A splendid memoir… a tale, at once tragic and beautiful, of love and loss, of coming of age and of witnessing the end of Indochina as the West had known it for more than a century.” - LA Times
“An absolutely riveting book … haunting, compulsive, and beautifully written, River of Time looks set to become a classic.” - Alexander Frater, Observer
“A romantic, evocative and touching book, the story of a young man’s coming-of-age in the shocking but desperately alluring war zones of Cambodia and Vietnam.” - Sunday Telegraph
I would recommend this book to those who want to understand more about how Cambodia entered into the big war and bloody genocide.
It will definitively make you image how beautiful Cambodia was in the past.
Check out River Of Time [Kindle Edition] on Amazon. Good reading!
If you are looking to read more books about Cambodia check out this blog post: 5 Best Fiction Books About Cambodia.
