Kampuchéa by Patrick Deville

Abstract

that Samuel must face every day. As Wolf becomes progressively crueler in his treatment, Samuel finally rebels and liberates himself from this psychological captivity. Much of the novel also describes the hero’s personal life beyond his daily torment at the office. He is a charming and good-looking homosexual, and the reader is made privy to several episodes in his love life. We also learn a great deal about Samuel’s Jewish heritage, through numerous references to Jewish holidays and themes. Samuel is looking for a Messiah, and his sufferings at the hands of Wolf are described as a kind of Calvary. Two of the other protagonists are homosexual friends of Samuel’s, and they too suffer victimization in various ways. His sometime partner Arsène Bazarov, a former television actor, is pursued by the police and the tax office because of crimes committed by someone who stole his identity. Arsène is subjected to interrogations reminiscent of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes and suffers a nervous breakdown. Finally exonerated, he flees to his native Auvergne to find a refuge with his mother and salvage what is left of his sanity. The other gay friend is a new acquaintance from Canada named Freddy Comfort, whose company has transferred him to its Paris branch. Freddy is a philosopher of optimism whose aim is to promote goodwill among all people, from co-workers to the whole universe , through the power of joy, kindness, and positive thinking. He has given his doctrine a graphic representation in a ‘tree of well-being,’ in which one rises to higher levels of stress-free fulfillment. He constantly preaches to everyone he meets to ‘go with the flow.’ Unfortunately, most people think Freddy is crazy, including his French colleagues, and he too becomes a victim of persecution. Despite his credo, he is almost driven to suicide in desperation. Ester, the fourth protagonist, is a married woman with children but currently separated from her husband, a screenwriter who now stalks her. She comes to the aid of her friends, like Samuel, but must also turn to them when her own situation becomes unbearable . She too seeks refuge in escape, running away to Sweden where she finds solace in a lesbian relationship with Anna, Wolf’s sister. Her choice of Sweden as a last resort is appropriate, since several incidents in the novel are compared, either by the characters or the narrator, to similar occurrences in Ingmar Bergman’s films. Multiple references to other filmmakers and literary masters demonstrate that the author and his creations are well-read and avid cinema-goers. University of Denver James P. Gilroy DEVILLE, PATRICK. Kampuchéa. Paris: Seuil, 2011. ISBN 978-2-02-099207-7. Pp. 259. 20 a. Deville’s latest book takes its place next to Pura vida (2004) and Equatoria (2009) in what looks, for the moment at least, like a trilogy. The author calls Kampuchéa a novel, an appellation that is provocative in view of the fact that there is very little fiction here—if indeed there is any at all. Focusing upon Cambodia, roughly from Henri Mouhot’s “discovery” of the temples of Angkor Wat in 1860 to the present time, Deville offers a meditation on history, geography, politics, culture, and the way those categories necessarily overlap in a place which has always found itself precariously situated “entre l’enclume et le marteau” (187). The event that draws Deville there is the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, and especially the trial of Kang Kek Iew, or “Duch,” the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders 412 FRENCH REVIEW 86.2 to be indicted, and who would be convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison in July 2010. That trial provides Deville with his principal narrative thread, around which he weaves an impressive variety of other stories. That of the French Mekong Expedition in 1866–68, lead by Ernest Doudart de Lagrée and Francis Garnier, for instance; or that of Vann Nath, who survived the Khmer Rouge camps by painting portraits of Pol Pot; or that of Marie-Charles David de Mayréna, who declared himself King of Sedang in 1888; or...