Review | Echoes of Graham Greene, Andre Malraux in debut novels set in French Indochina, published by Penguin Random House SEA
- In Zero Season by Justin Clark, a French farm boy and a Cambodian student begin a gay affair in Paris, the latter drawn to his nation’s independence struggle
- In Too Far From Antibes, a naive French journalist in Saigon investigates his brother’s murder. Graham Greene’s The Quiet American resonates in the background
Too Far From Antibes by Bede Scott; The Zero Season by Justin T. Clark, pub. Penguin Random House SEA
Since its launch in 2018, Singapore-based Penguin Random House SEA has sought out new local writing and publisher Nora Nazerene Abu Bakar has built a diverse list across genres and countries.
For those who like historical fiction with a powerful sense of place, two new novels from the publisher stand out. Both are from debut novelists and set amid the post-war anti-colonial struggles of French Indochina. And both carry their literary antecedents overtly as homages to earlier authors.
Justin T. Clark’s The Zero Season is set in 1949, split between a Paris still recovering from occupation and a soon-to-be independent Cambodia. Summoned to a funeral, Etienne, estranged from his family for being gay, is returning to his birthplace of Paris from his new life on a Picardy farm.
Meanwhile, a student from Siem Reap, Samphan, is becoming increasingly involved with the Cambodian independence struggle and searching for his lost sister, who disappeared in Paris a decade earlier.
