Novel
ផ្កាស្រពោន
Not translated into English
Nou Hach · 1947
Synopsis
Bunthoeun and Vitheavy have been promised to each other since childhood by their fathers, close friends. But the young man's family, he being a lycée pupil in Phnom Penh, is ruined when the boat carrying his father's cargo of rice sinks; old Nuon, a widow and Vitheavy's mother, who prefers money to honour, breaks the engagement and promises her daughter to Naisot, a rich, hot-tempered and unscrupulous man. Vitheavy falls ill and pines for Bunthoeun, without daring to stand up to her mother.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in the newspaper Kambuja, in 1947. It makes the greedy mother the engine of misfortune and sets against a childhood love the sudden ruin of a family, a plot that became a leitmotif of the modern Khmer novel; one chapter follows the expedition into the forest of Bunthoeun and some peasants from Battambang. Placed on the secondary-school syllabus from 1958, it still is in the eighth year, and a literary association took the name of its author in 2002. A Khmer documentation centre based in Paris reissued it in 1980.
Who it is for
For those interested in the classics of the Khmer novel and in the critique of marriages arranged by families.
Prizes and reception
Ranked with those of Rim Kin and Nhok Them among the three classic novels of modern Cambodia, it was translated into French in 2014.
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