The Disappeared

by KimEchlin (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $17.78

  After more than 30 years Anne Greves feels compelled to break her silence about her first lover, and a treacherous pursuit across Cambodia's killing fields.
  Once she was a motherless girl from taciturn immigrant stock. Defying fierce opposition, she falls in love with Serey, a gentle rebel and exiled musician. She's still only 16 when he leaves her in their Montreal flat to return to Cambodia And, after a decade without word, she abandons everything to search for him in the bars of Phnom Penh, a city traumatized by the Khmer Rouge slaughter. Against all odds the lovers are reunited, and in a political country where tranquil rice paddies harbour the bones of the massacred, Anne pieces together a new life with Serey. But there are wounds that love cannot heal, and some mysteries too dangerous to know. And when Serey disappears again, Anne discovers a story she cannot bear.
  Haunting, vivid, elegiac, The Disappeared is a tour de force; at once a battle cry and a piercing lamentation, for truth, for love.

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.25

  After more than 30 years Anne Greves feels compelled to break her silence about her first lover, and a treacherous pursuit across Cambodia's killing fields. Once she was a motherless girl from taciturn immigrant stock. Defying fierce opposition, she falls in love with Serey, a gentle rebel and exiled musician. She's still only 16 when he leaves her in their Montreal flat to return to Cambodia And, after a decade without word, she abandons everything to search for him in the bars of Phnom Penh, a city traumatized by the Khmer Rouge slaughter. Against all odds the lovers are reunited, and in a political country where tranquil rice paddies harbour the bones of the massacred, Anne pieces together a new life with Serey. But there are wounds that love cannot heal, and some mysteries too dangerous to know. And when Serey disappears again, Anne discovers a story she cannot bear. Haunting, vivid, elegiac, The Disappeared is a tour de force; at once a battle cry and a piercing lamentation, for truth, for love.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $17.85

  A fiercely beautiful love story for the ages, The Disappeared traces one woman's three-decades-long journey from the peaceful streets of Montreal to the war-torn villages of Cambodia, as a brief affair turns into a grand passion of loss and remembrance, set against one of the most brutal genocides of our time. When sixteen-year-old Anne Greves first meets Serey, a Cambodian student forced to leave his country during the rise of the Khmer Rouge, she never considers the consequences of their complicated romance. Swept up in the infatuation of young love, Anne ignores her father's wishes and embraces her relationship with Serey in Montreal's smoky jazz clubs and in his cramped yellow bedroom. But when the borders of Cambodia are reopened, Serey must risk his life to return home in search of his family. A decade later, Anne will travel halfway around the world to find him, and to save their love from the same tragic forces that first brought them together. In aching, tender prose, Kim Echlin challenges our notions of how to both claim the past of move on after insufferable loss. Part elegy, part love letter, part call to arms, The Disappeared is a soaring tribute to those who have disappeared in the violent conflicts throughout history.