Soth Polin is a Cambodian writer. He was born in the hamlet of Chroy Thmar, Kampong Siem District, Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia. His maternal great-grandfather was the poet Nou Kan (who wrote Teav-Ek, ទាវឯក, a version of Tum Teav, the masterpiece of Khmer love poetry). 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 philosophy of the West. His first novel, A Meaningless Life, published in 1965 (he was 22 years old), 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 Independent Khmer), the newspaper of his uncle, Sim Var, and in the late 1960s, he founded (with Sin Kim Suy) his own newspaper and publishing house, Nokor Thom (នគរធំ / The Great Kingdom). 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 and novellas (in Khmer) ==

Collections of short stories (in Khmer)

Play (in Khmer)

Essays, articles and translation (in Khmer)

Novel and short stories (in French)

« 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. » (Penny Edwards, Berkeley University).

Essays, articles, and miscellaneous works (in French)

Translations of his work

Quotes