A chance meeting in a Cambodian market inspired Kim Echlin's 'The Disappeared'

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by: Sheri.Block
Date: 11/2/2009 11:03:00 AM ET

A chance meeting with a woman in a Phnom Penh market inspired Kim Echlin’s latest novel “The Disappeared” – a beautiful and tragic love story set against the backdrop of the Cambodian genocide.

• Read an excerpt from "The Disappeared" here on CTV.ca

The Toronto-based author was visiting the country with her husband, who was on a medical trip, when the encounter occurred.   

“She kind of moved in very close and after chatting a little bit she said to me, ‘I lost my whole family during Pol Pot’ and I didn’t know what to say. So I just said, ‘I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help you?’ and she said, ‘No, I just want you to know.’”

Echlin had no intentions of writing a novel about Cambodia’s dark past but the conversation had such a profound impact on her, she started doing extensive research on the genocide as soon as she got home.

Through books, the Internet, and even a motorcycle touring company in Cambodia who took photos and helped her understand the country’s language and customs, she was able to attain a clearer picture of the horrific event that occurred between 1975 - 1979 under Pol Pot’s regime, where approximately two million people died.

The Khmer Rouge genocide trials only just began in March, 2009 – 30 years after the atrocities were committed – and although there weren’t any Truth and Reconciliation commissions from Cambodia at the time of her research, Echlin read the commissions and survivor accounts from various other countries around the world, including South Africa.

She found a commonality to many of the stories – a certain courage that comes in telling a story about living through such a trauma.

“I began to develop the voices for this book from those voices,” says Echlin of her novel, which took seven years to complete.

The main voice in “The Disappeared” is that of Anne Greves, a 16-year-old high school student in Montreal when the story begins. While out with some friends one night, she meets a Cambodian student named Serey who is exiled in Canada when the borders to his country are closed.

The two fall in love and after a brief but passionate affair, Serey is able to return home when the borders re-open and goes looking for his family. A devastated Anne spends the next 11 years wondering about her lover, even though she hasn’t heard from him since the day he left. 

When Anne thinks she sees Serey on the news one night, she takes a leap of faith and travels to Phnom Penh to try and find him.

“I think a first passionate love can make people do those things,” says Echlin with a laugh. “I know that everybody does not have that experience but there are people who do.”

What Anne finds in Cambodia is startling – both to her and the reader. She hears stories of the evacuations, the killings, the bodies and the bones and witnesses the devastating effects still taking place.  

Echlin says she was able to get a first-hand look at the devastation by visiting some of the official sites in Cambodia, including the former Security Prison 21, or Tuol Sleng, in Phnom Penh, which is now a museum.

“What I was really moved by though when we moved around the countryside … there would be little handwritten signs that would be nailed to trees, they were marked sights of killings and so at that time, even though it wasn’t officially sanctioned by the government, the government was urging the people to move on and rebuild, there was a huge impulse to remember and to not forget.”

The story of her time in Cambodia and her search for Serey is told from Anne’s perspective 30 years later as it has taken her this long to be able to talk about what happened. 

“I think a lot of people who survive trauma don’t speak of closure, they speak of living with what they’ve experienced,” says Echlin.

“She can never forget. And in some ways the love story mirrors the trauma story in the sense that we maybe never forget these more profound experiences that we have.” 

Not only is it something Anne will never forget, it’s a story Echlin will also never forget.

“It certainly changed the way I think about genocide, it changed the way I think about people who survive … I think you live it differently as you get to different parts of your life but it is a story that I’ll continue to hold.”