ThaRum

Last Friday evening I had a talk with several Cambodia Webloggers. As Elizabeth traveled from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, John organized the meet-up at a foreign restaurant along Sisowath Quay. It was until then that I met Michaela, who has fellowship with the Congressional Hunger Center and she is now working in Cambodia. It has been a while that I read her Weblog to understand how a first-time foreign visitor views Cambodia and the people. She is also a contributing-author for Global Youth Fund. The photo can be found on her Flickr photo album: here and here. And surprisingly, I had the chance to talk with Geoff Ryman, book author of The King’s Last Song. His Cambodian history novel is set to be launched this weekend at the Foreign Correspondents Club. I hope to be there, too. Thank John for sending me Geoff’s introductory note:

Sunday 9th April, 6.30 pm
Foreign Correspondents Club
There is so much to be said about the beauties, history and tragedy of Cambodia that all of us talking together for a week could not say enough.
My novel THE KING’S LAST SONG focuses on two things foreigners think they know about Cambodia - the Angkor era and the catastrophes since 1970. It imagines a life of Jayavarman VII. It also tells the story of two modern Cambodians, a patrimony policeman haunted by his memories of the wars and a young motoboy whose guardians will not talk about Cambodia’s recent history.
I’d like to talk for a short while about how I came to write the book and the issues around a Westerner writing it.
Most of all, I’d like to share parts of the novel with you by reading from it to give a flavour of the story, characters and its different tones of voice. So this will be an entertainment as well as talk.
The launch is being held on April 9th at 6:30 PM at the FCC rooftop. I would love you to attend.
I’d like to thank Monument Books, the FCC and the Nou Hach Literary Journal for this opportunity.
Yours.
Geoff RYMAN

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 18:06 pm and is filed under Book. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.