Ek Tha’s Semi-autobiographical Novel "Long Love, Short Life"

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Ek Tha’s Semi-autobiographical Novel "Long Love, Short Life"

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Book by Ex-journalist, Scholar Reveals New Cambodia Shapes Old Love, Domestic, Foreign Policy
AKP Phnom Penh, September 15, 2020 --

Ek Tha’s semi-autobiographical novel Long Love, Short Life, is a worthy addition to the literature of post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia – a nation struggling to recover from the horrors of the insane Pol Pot-led genocide regime, to come to terms with its immediate past, trying to revive its shattered traditional cultural mores and identity and adjust them to the new reality and its challenges to prevailing social norms.

Ek Tha’s own journey, from refugee to journalist, and now a spokesperson for the Royal Government of Cambodia, his travels overseas, give him a unique perspective from which to reach out to and inform both Cambodian and foreign readers, in a naïf style that takes us from innocence to knowledge and, finally, acceptance.

Set in in the aftermath of the overthrow of Pol Pot by Vietnamese and Cambodian volunteers, with the countryside still infested by Khmer Rouge rebels, Long Love, Short Life, tells the story of Duongchan, a young provincial girl struggling against poverty to complete her education, and her classmate, Dara, son of a middle-class business family.

It is a time when the U.S. imposed sanctions against providing aid to Cambodia, as part of the Cold War, which were to last for a decade.

Significantly, it is when Duongchan’s bicycle chain breaks in the midst of a downpour that she meets Dara. The bicycle not only links her to her modest family home but to her future through education. It is Dara, with his technology, who offers protection against the threat of the Khmer Rouge raiders who still attack villages in the countryside and, in a sense, protects Duongchan’s future.

Their love must survive the trials culture and tradition, and the strict conservatism of the new Vietnam-supported regime of Phnom Penh. They dream dreams and make plans, but their world is changing, driven by the winds of fate and fortune, and like Cambodia and its people, Duongchan and Dara must adjust to the new reality and its sometimes tragic consequences.
It is a love that conquers death itself. Inspired by the author’s own experiences, Ek Madra, aka Ek Tha, follows their lives over the next quarter century with charm, humour, poignancy and sharp insight into human nature and the forces that impact on Duongchan and Dara as they mature. He draws on the remarkable character of the Cambodian people to accept change with equanimity whilst holding hard to their deep and ancient roots of tradition. It is a uniquely Cambodia story. And it is, in so many ways, the story of Cambodia.
https://www.akp.gov.kh/post/detail/218461
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Re: Ek Tha’s Semi-autobiographical Novel "Long Love, Short Life"

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

Looks good, i might get it.
Not for the romance of course, but it sounds like it might give some insight into the powerful undercurrents that many traditional historians just do not see.
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Re: Ek Tha’s Semi-autobiographical Novel "Long Love, Short Life"

Post by Khmu Nation »

Come on you just love romantic fiction.
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