The Noble Path

Travel Guide

Travel BookTrail style to Cambodia and Thailand

The author mentions in his author note that this book is an update of the one he wrote

It  takes place in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, when the murderous and anarchic regime established by the Khmer Rouge in neighbouring Cambodia systematically annihilated three million people. This was not so much ethnic cleansing, as the eradication of thinking and educated people. the Khmer Rouge saw intelligence, and the expression of ideas, as the biggest threat to their existence.

He bemoans the fact that nearly thirty years later, as he reworked the book, he found that the themes within, the immigration and refugee issues are with us every bit as much now as it was then.

He was unable to enter Cambodia for the writing of this book as it was still an unstable and dangerous place, but he carefully researched this in Thailand. The history, evocation of time and place is painfully clear to see.  In the chapters set in Cambodia, you can see the effects of the regime and the return of society to the Year Zero. The novel shows that Cambodia is a genocidal, fanatical, communist regime and the effects on its people are hard to imagine.