From The Accused

Published in 1973, The Accused is Khun Srun's last novel. The narrator is a writer imprisoned by Cambodia's military government. He asserts that he is not a person of politics or even a man of conviction, simply an observer and a writer. A lover of literature, he wants to flee the country and be part of the wider world; yet he wants, also, to have the courage to risk his life for his principles.

Shortly after The Accused was published, Khun Srun left Phnom Penh and joined the Khmer Rouge. He was eventually assigned work as a railway engineer. In December 1978, Srun, like so many who had committed their lives to the socialist ideals of the revolution, was arrested. He was held in the most notorious prison of the regime. Days after his arrest, Srun, his wife, and two of their children were executed. Only their nine-year-old daughter, Khun Khem, survived. Two weeks after Srun's execution, the Khmer Rouge fell from power

I first read an excerpt of Srun's work nearly a decade ago. I was struck by the deep turmoil beneath the disturbing calm of his prose. Lines he wrote at the height of Cambodia's civil war have a conscious dissonance with his collapsing society: the words are measured, reserved, quiet as the nation explodes in war.

I unexpectedly encountered Srun's work again when French filmmaker Eric Galmard screened his documentary, Un tombeau pour Khun Srun, at the 2015 Cambodia International Film Festival in Phnom Penh. The film affected me deeply. Afterwards, I sought out Galmard, who had portrayed, so powerfully, the dissonances as well as the longing in Srun's work. "There is a repulsion to violence," Galmard told me, "but, at the same time, a critique of populist Buddhism, of fatalism and accepting things as they are." He said that Srun had a Socratic impulse, and in his brief life sought to live an examined existence, true to his principles. Galmard sent me the few translated fragments he had of The Accused and put me in contact with Khmer–French translator and writer Christophe Macquet, who kindly gave his permission for the following translation. mt