Soth Polin


Soth Polin is a famous Khmer writer. His maternal great-grandfather was the poet Nou Kan. He grew up speaking both French and Khmer. Throughout his youth, he immersed himself in the classical literature of Cambodia and, at the same time, the literature and the philosophy of the West.
His first novel, A Meaningless Life, published in 1965, was strongly influenced by Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre and Buddhist philosophy. It was an enormous success. Numerous novels and short stories followed, among them The Adventurer With No Goal, A Bored Man, We Die Only Once, and Dead Heart. He also worked as a journalist in Khmer Ekareach, the newspaper of his uncle, Sim Var, and in the late 1960s, he founded the newspaper and publishing house, Nokor Thom. He was a militant nationalist who was both anti-Sihanouk and anti-communist. Through his newspaper, he supported the pro-American government of General Lon Nol before finally distancing himself and suddenly taking refuge in France in 1974, after the assassination of his friend, Thach Chea, the Deputy Minister of Education.
His father and two of his brothers died during the Khmer Rouge regime. He worked in Paris as a taxi driver and published his dark cult novel The Anarchist, written in French. Later he and his two sons moved to the West Coast of the United States, where he now resides. His brother-in-law is Mam Sonando.

Novels (in Khmer)

« The Anarchist flouts the mythology of "la belle France" and takes us to an entrepôt of broken dreams where the trauma of war haunts a Cambodian émigré, whose monologue comprises the second half of the novel. In Paris, weeks after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian taxi-driver Virak unburdens himself of a terrible secret. His audience is fresh road-kill: a young English tourist who is a victim of his distracted driving. Unlike other Europeans in the novel, who impose their own journalistic or ethnographic narratives on Cambodia, she cannot talk back. ».