The Gate

Bizot's book describes his captivity in Cambodia during the latter months of 1971 and then moves to spring, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh, forcing him to take refuge at the French Embassy with several thousand others (as depicted at the beginning of The Killing Fields). His writing is lucid, elegant and insightful, and his role during this event was crucial: he was one of the few foreigners who spoke Khmer fluently and the only one with any real experience with the Khmer Rouge. The book reads like a great adventure novel and Bizot's love for Cambodia and its people contrasts sharply with the brutality of the communists as they seize control of the nation. Bizot had a unique opportunity to engage them in intelligent debate and expose the contradictions and flawed thinking behind their quest for power. Oddly enough, Bizot barely mentions the fact that he was forced to abandon his Khmer wife and daughter, who almost certainly died during the Pol Pot regime. In a book so full of pain and sorrow, this seems puzzling, although the author may have been reticent to touch this deepest of all agonies. As a historical document, this book is a marvel of detail and considered analysis, totally eclipsing Schanberg's (The Death and Life of Dith Pran) crude description of the embassy drama and going far beyond Jon Swain's brief chapter in River of Time. Bizot owes his life to the Khmer Rouge Executioner Douch (See The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge), who persuaded Pol Pot to release him over the bloodthirsty demands of Ta Mok. These three Khmer Rouge leaders went on to kill hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and at least 30 non-Asian foreigners, of whom Bizot was the only one to be released. Easily the best work of non-fiction I have ever read.

If you're looking for a history book-this is not the one for you. I greatly enjoyed reading this book and it is nothing more than what it claims to be: a personal account of one man who survives incredible and tragic events.He offers a rich description of Cambodia, housed in an unique perspective. However, I never got bogged down in description that was too dense. It is a profound, but accessible read. I picked it up primarily for greedy glimpses of Angkor. Though that's not quite what I got, I was more than satisfied with the journey on which Bizot took me.

In the final chapter of "The Gate" Francois Bizot writes, "There are experiences that make us reappraise everything." In large part this book is an accounting of those experiences of the nightmare which was Cambodia in the 1970's. It has taken 30 years for Bizot to get this personal narrative out to the reading public and it stands as a significant contribution in the literature.

This is a difficult, haunting book, very precise and confident in its account of suffering and human turmoil, its descriptions, perceptions, and judgments. I found the translation peculiar in spots and checked it against the French original - there are odd lapses in diction and occasionally subtle changes in emphasis or meaning, but on the whole it successfully conveys the power of Bizot's anguished and angry prose. His take on the effects of American power abroad - expressed with the articulateness of unmitigated rage - is, to say the least, sobering.

Since I met the author in Chiang Mai a decade ago -- when he somewhat reluctantly described his experiences as a prisoner inside the infamous Khmer Rouge M13 prison camp commanded by "Douch" and gave me a copy of the safe-travel pass written for him by a North Vietnamese officer during the first of Bizot's many brushes with death -- this was the one great book I impatiently awaited. As it turns out, "The Gate" is far more powerful than I could ever have imagined. Readers will find it painful to read through their tears, but will be unable to lay the book down. As John Le Carre writes in the foreword, "Now and then you read a book, and, as you put it down, you realize that you envy everybody who has not read it, simply because, unlike you, they will have the experience before them." The brilliantly written introduction shows how little the world has changed since the historic disaster in Cambodia. In contrast to many Frenchmen, Bizot saw the Americans as allies in 1970, but recognized an "inexcusable naivete" in the Americans, and he comments, "I do not know what to reproach them for more, their intervention or their withdrawal." As for the French government of that day he comments, "... fear of appearing to support the Americans so froze minds that nowhere in Europe were people free enough to voice their indignation and denounce the lies (of the Vietnamese and Cambodian communist revolutions)." In one of his verbal duels with his interrogator, Bizot questions the insane logic of the revolutionary, asking if the Khmer Rouge cadre did not see that the revolutionary line was just a trick constructed using basic Buddhist traditions to deceive the people and itself, just as it used the name of Sihanouk as a mask. For me there will never be another book quite like Bizot's to come from a Westerner. Bizot is a man who lives life his way, thinks his own thoughts, follows no man or no government blindly. A true citizen of the world. Fortunately, Cambodians have recently started writing their own stories, and it will truly take river of ink to record the horrors they have experienced. New books by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (dccam.org) go into great detail on the barbaric tortures used at camp M13 and at Tuol Sleng, tortures which even Bizot could not have dreamed of at the time he was held there.