Return to Clay - A Romance of Colonial Cambodia

Charged with constructing a great bridge, Frenchman Claude Rollin travels to Cambodia with his wife Raymonde, who reluctantly sacrifices her high-society Parisian life. She adapts poorly, suffering from homesickness, fever and depression, colored by an innate fear of the local people.

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Claude, however, gradually embraces the natural beauty, values and purity of the gentle kingdom. Then he meets Kamlang, a native girl with whom he forges "a relationship unlike any he had ever imagined, or could imagine, while still bound by his Western values." His decisions result in anguish, betrayal, violence and-ultimately-epiphany.

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George Groslier-one of the greatest witnesses of colonial Cambodia-won the 1929 Grand Prix de Littrature Coloniale for his tour de force novel, presented here in English for the first time, with the complete original French text.

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"I will settle in the loveliest places," proclaims the hero, late in the novel. This is the dream that Groslier, with his painterly talent and powerful, delicate pen, expresses so well, imbuing these places with some of the deepest significance to be found in the colonial period...Rejoice, dear reader, for you too can now discover these places, forever vanished yet eternally alive.
- Professor Henri Copin, Preface