The Orphans

Abstract

Abstract:Suy Hieng is one of Cambodia's first female novelists. From her youth, war was present in her life and writing. In 1952, she published Veasna Nei Neang Nakry (Destiny of Miss Nakry), which begins with the American bombing of Phnom Penh in 1945, during Japan's occupation of Cambodia. In 1964, she had stopped writing for ten years but resumed after the tragedy of Chantrea—in which a town in Svay Rieng was destroyed when American and South Vietnamese forces bombed it with tons of ordnance and napalm. After going to the scene of devastation, Suy Hieng wrote the novel Chantrea: Khmer Territory, which was a huge success and adapted for the cinema. Its epigraph, "The Orphans," was later set to music by Pov Sipho. cm/sm