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Dogs at the Perimeter

Madeleine Thien

3.75 · Rating details · 1,195 ratings · 192 reviews

“Remember this night,” he said. “Mark it in your memories because tomorrow everything changes.”

One starless night, a girl’s childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from the city, she and her family were forced to live out in the open under constant surveillance. Each night, people were taken away. Caught up in a political storm which brought st ...more

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Hardcover, 264 pages

Published May 3rd 2011 by McClelland & Stewart (first published 2011)

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Sep 21, 2017 Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Janie is a researcher at the Montreal Neroulogical Center, but she was once known by different names in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She once came from a middle class family, had a father, mother, brother, until War came, and Cambodia became the killing fields. Made to leave their home by the Khmer Rouge, her life and family will never be the same.

Haunted by the memories of the past, and the atrocities committed at the hand of the Khmer Rouge, Janie falls apart. Leaving her husband and young son, she s ...more

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Sep 24, 2016 Hugh rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, read-2017

This is my second Thien novel, after Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was my personal favourite book on the 2016 Booker shortlist. Like that book, this one is deeply immersed in history, this time exploring the brutal period when the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia, and as such it is not an easy read, but it is a profoundly moving one.

The story is held together by Janie, who was born in Cambodia but eventually escaped and lives in Canada with a husband and son she is separated from. She works a ...more

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Dec 14, 2017 Cheryl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: those interested in the psyche of war

Shelves: global-intrigue, war-stories, mesmerizing, fiction, the-psyche

I wanted to go home but this was as close as I could bring myself, floating by sea, floating in air.

So this is how it feels, when you read a book you'd like to write, a book that exposes a similar experience or feeling. We war survivors are a disjointed group, traversing normalcy while carrying the ones we left behind, the ones who left us behind. Sometimes we find each other, the similarly wounded, and we talk about the past, careful to avoid the details; we generalize stories because remem I wanted to go home but this was as close as I could bring myself, floating by sea, floating in air.

So this is how it feels, when you read a book you'd like to write, a book that exposes a similar experience or feeling. We war survivors are a disjointed group, traversing normalcy while carrying the ones we left behind, the ones who left us behind. Sometimes we find each other, the similarly wounded, and we talk about the past, careful to avoid the details; we generalize stories because remembering the whole is itself a healing process. This book was such a conversation. Although the story occurs in an unfamiliar region, the universal strife seems familiar, the survey of damaged lives realistic, as is the exploration of memory, of memory loss, of pain, and of the inherent need to let the past flow freely.

The soul is a slippery thing. A door slammed too loudly can send it running. A beautiful, shining object can catch its attention and lure it away. But in darkness, unpursued, the soul, the pralung, can climb back in through an open window, it can be returned to you.

There is great beauty in the clarity of this prose, a composed structure that occurs between fragments of memory. Not everyone will understand this vision of trauma in words, this structure that parallels a fragile brain (Champagne in the brain).It is the story that should hold for most. The story of totalitarianism is haunting; the story of the Khmer Rouge and Phnom Penh; the story of Cambodia. Each chapter is a small story that continues into a bigger novel, a structure so uniquely tightened that you don't lose your place within an evolving narrative of the self and the soul and their relation to the body. How do survivors escape the brutality of the traumatized present? This book explores that and much more.

Terrible dreams came, but I tried to let them run through me and reach the ground. I saw that they would always return, this was the shape of my life, this was where the contours lay, this was the form. Yet I wanted, finally, to be the one to describe it. To decide on the dreams that took root in me. ...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Annabel Smith rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian, pwf2013

I should start by admitting that I rarely read books with this kind of harrowing subject matter because I find them too distressing. But there is a gentle beauty to Madeleine's writing that enables you to keep reading, despite the atrocities being described.

Like Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper, and Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance, this feels like one of those stories that absolutely needs to be told. I had no idea of the scope of the genocide committed at the hands of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, ...more

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Sep 14, 2017 Jennifer (Insert Lit Pun) rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars. This is a less ambitious, accomplished novel than Do Not Say We Have Nothing, but it’s got its own disjointed grace and eerie power. It follows two Canadian adults who lost family to the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, and takes you down a twisted path of searing memories, discarded identities, and ghosts who walk alongside the living. Thien’s writing, although overwrought in isolated moments, is mostly sparse and powerful. It’s a hard book to get into because most of the frosty, fr ...more

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Oct 25, 2016 Magdelanye rated it really liked it

Shelves: displacement, social-history, culture-conflict, social-commentary, war-torn

That atrocity could be documented in writing of such lyrical delicacy is an achievement that enabled this reader to bear witness.
Sometimes confusing, the splintered arc of the story mimics the confusion of war and emphasizes the insidious reach of what is vaguely known as post traumatic stress disorder. There's hope in the message I got, that in spite of the unspeakable things that war inflicts upon people, inner peace is possible when we face our demons rather than try to deny them. ...more

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May 14, 2011 Friederike Knabe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: canadian-lit

"We had to sign our names to these biographies, and we did this over and over, naming family and friends, illuminating the past. My little brother and I were only eight and ten years old but, even then, we understood that the story of one's life could not be trusted, that it could destroy you and all the people you loved." Evicted from their family home in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, by the Khmer Rouge, Mei and her family are forced to follow the long and arduous trek through a devastated co "We had to sign our names to these biographies, and we did this over and over, naming family and friends, illuminating the past. My little brother and I were only eight and ten years old but, even then, we understood that the story of one's life could not be trusted, that it could destroy you and all the people you loved." Evicted from their family home in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, by the Khmer Rouge, Mei and her family are forced to follow the long and arduous trek through a devastated country, only to see the parents being taken away and the children ending up in a one of the many work camps. "Families are a disease of the past" and "attachment to the world is a crime", was the official position of the Khmer Rouge. Mei's voice forms the compelling centre of Madeleine Thien's extraordinary and deeply moving novel of loss and survival, of memory and identity, of past and present intermingling, and of the underlying deep-seated need to heal from the wounds inflicted on body and soul. But how?

Rarely have I read a novel that pulled me so quickly so deeply into the emotional life and traumas of the central characters and the external circumstances that led to these upheavals. Madeleine Thien takes us deep into the brutal and devastating realities of the Khmer Rouge Regime that lasted officially from 1975 to 1978, but whose violent actions were felt inside the country for a much longer time. It seem inconceivable to us today, what happened to the people of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge Regime, that left between one and two million people dead and many others displaced without trace.

Written with admirable delicacy and tenderness, deep compassion and understanding, Thien recounts the harrowing and life-threatening circumstances of the past as seen primarily through the eyes of ten-year old Mei. These events not only kept haunting the young girl but they inflicted such deep emotional wounds that the after-effects have been reaching, like an octopus's tentacles, into the present and continue to deeply trouble the innermost soul of forty-year old survivor, Janie. "It's in the night, I know, that the ones we love disappear[...] In my dreams I saw every one and everything[...] The Khmer Rouge had taught us how to survive, walking alone, carrying nothing in our hands. Belongings were slid away, then family and loved ones, then finally our loyalties and ourselves. Worthless or precious, indifferent or loved, all of our treasures had been treated the same."

"Mei" was not her real name, but a name given to her by one of the guards controlling the children's camp, a youth hardly older, but with AK 47s slung over his shoulder as a sign of power. "Names", Mei learned, "were empty syllables, signifying nothing, lost as easily as a suit of clothes, a brother or a sister, an entire world. " For her it felt normal, when, some time after finally escaping and arriving in Canada, she requested a Canadian name: Mei became Janie. If only suffering and trauma could be stripped away as easily as a name! Janie, now thirty years later and working as a neurological researcher in Montreal, cannot free herself from the past: "How many lives can we live?" [...] "I have too many selves and they no longer fit together." While memories are vivid in her dreams, she sees bare walls when she wakes up. She is still not able to find a voice to share any of her harrowing experiences, not even with those closest to her. One day, however, her search into the disappearance of her fatherly friend and mentor, Hiroji, "cracks open" something hidden deep inside her... and her life shatters into more shards than she is able to catch as they fall. Convinced that Hiroji left for Cambodia in search of his brother Junicho (James), who had disappeared in Phnom Penh in 1975, she also has to embarks on a journey...

Madeleine Thien's novel opens with Janie's investigation into Hiroji's disappearance. Her search for clues as to his whereabouts provides the trigger to bring her own past vividly back into focus and to relive Mei's ordeals and her struggle for survival. It is an intimate account, a journey that, at times, is harrowing, always emotionally charged, fast moving and totally absorbing. With a confident hand, a tender gentle touch and a deeply compassionate mind, Thien has brought a story to life in which the past and the present blend together in the minds of her characters, where the world of the past demands attention in the world of the present, where wounds can only heal when the causes for the paperthin scars are confronted again and written or talked about with those who love and can give of themselves.

Madeleine Thien's new novel is a marvel in many ways. She writes with such gentleness and thoughtfulness as well as deep understanding of a particular historical time that as readers we feel drawn completely into the mind of "Mei", the ten-year at the centre of the harrowing events and her forty-year old adult self, Janie, whose life is in danger of total disintegration if she cannot heal from the past experiences. Depending on her needs, Thien's language can be sparse or rich with poetic imagery and unusual rhythms; often her descriptions are impressionistic, evoking situations rather than spelling out the gruesome details, leaving it to the reader to complete the picture or thought in their own minds. Some images remind me of Chinese painting where a few brushstrokes can tell a complete story. Thien's many personal encounters with survivors, both in Cambodia and elsewhere, has given her rare insights into the long-term effects of deep trauma even decades later. She has transposed these authentic voices into an extraordinary, powerful and important novel. ...more

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Jan 08, 2018 Jo rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5 stars

‘I remembered beauty. Long ago, it had not seemed necessary to note its presence, to memorize it, to set the dogs out at the perimeter.’

This was my first Madeleine Thein book, not having read her more famous Do Not Say We Have Nothing and although I admired the writing and was interested in learning about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, this wasn’t quite as successful as I expected.

The book is initially set in Canada, where Janie a former Cambodian citizen who fled the country during the 3.5 stars

‘I remembered beauty. Long ago, it had not seemed necessary to note its presence, to memorize it, to set the dogs out at the perimeter.’

This was my first Madeleine Thein book, not having read her more famous Do Not Say We Have Nothing and although I admired the writing and was interested in learning about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, this wasn’t quite as successful as I expected.

The book is initially set in Canada, where Janie a former Cambodian citizen who fled the country during the Khmer Rouge rule, is struggling with the memories and experiences of that time coming to the surface. Her friend Hiroji lost his brother at the same time and has recently gone missing himself and it is this in part that seems to have stimulated her suppressed memories. We move from her thoughts and dreams in icy Canada, to her youth in Cambodia in the mid 1970’s as well as looking at Hiroji’s brothers experience during the same period and finally to Hiroji himself as he searches for James.

I’m glad I kept going after the initial sections in Canada as their fragmentary nature made it difficult to get a toehold on the novel, difficult to understand what was real. The sections set in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos were, heart wrenching, well written and absorbing. I knew the Khmer Rouge period was one of persecution and torture but having it in front of you on the page is quite different. The way in which people were taken from the city to the villages and made to work for nothing, the way in which interrogation and torture made people say anything, spy on anyone, lose their minds and their pasts. The Khmer Rouge used to make citizens write down their life history, their backstory and there is the sense that by doing this, they were taking it away, stealing people’s identity and memories.

We see with Janies’ brother Sopham, and Hiroji’s brother James, that to survive they have to become someone or something else and have to hide who they really are and where and who they come from. Janie says;

‘My little brother and I were only eight and ten years old but, even then, we understood that the story of one’s own life could not be trusted, that it could destroy you and all the people you loved.’

The book has a lot to say about the nature and fluidity of identity, the idea of the soul, and of the importance of language. Janie and Hiroji work in the neurological field and their clients include those who have lost language or body awareness. I felt Thien intended this work they were doing tied into the importance of words in the period of the Khmer rouge and the notion of what is being but the connection felt a little forced if that’s what it was.

Even when Nuong and Mei are adopted and sent to America, their names are changed as though this simple act is enough to forget their past but at the end of the novel the only way Janie seems able to come to terms with the past welling up is by the concept of memory theatres, a way of packing away the painful and accepting that it will always be there. ‘The pages would remain, like a library, like a city, holding the things I needed to keep but that I could not live with. If such a library, a memory theatre, existed, I could be both who I was and who I had come to be.’

As you can see the writing is often beautiful and the subject matter is important, the difficulty of reading the initial chapters may be there to illustrate the fragmentation of Janie’s mind but it made it hard to progress initially. I am still very keen to read Do Not Say we Have Nothing and feel sure that I will enjoy that one to a greater extent as Madeleine Thien is clearly a talented writer. ...more

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Apr 01, 2018 Alvin Loong rated it liked it · review of another edition

My mom is a Cambodian refugee, my dad is Malaysian, and naturally, this novel was obligatory reading for me. Asian American/Canadian authors have been on the rise recently, with Khmer authors especially resurgent after First They Killed My Father (Luong Ung, 2000) was made into a film by Angelina Jolie last year.

Thien worked to align a narrative of diasporic life in modern and quiet Canada, with the roots of internecine chaos from a 1970s Cambodian childhood. She skims the surface of the horror ...more

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Aug 12, 2019 jessica rated it it was ok · review of another edition

discordant and puzzling. reminded me of the dazed dreams i have before actually falling asleep.

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Mar 08, 2012 Lauren K rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Dogs at the Perimeter is an emotionally charged story about the lingering effects of the Khmer Rouge war in Cambodia on fictional characters Janie, Hiroji and James. It’s a short novel at just over 250 pgs.

The story is set in 2005 in Canada and is told in first person account by the protagonist, Janie, a Cambodian woman who has separated from her patient husband Navin and kind-hearted son Kiri. Janie is a lost soul, with an unresolved past stemming from her early experiences as a victim of the Dogs at the Perimeter is an emotionally charged story about the lingering effects of the Khmer Rouge war in Cambodia on fictional characters Janie, Hiroji and James. It’s a short novel at just over 250 pgs.

The story is set in 2005 in Canada and is told in first person account by the protagonist, Janie, a Cambodian woman who has separated from her patient husband Navin and kind-hearted son Kiri. Janie is a lost soul, with an unresolved past stemming from her early experiences as a victim of the war in Cambodia. Witness to death, murders and first-hand experiences of grief, loss and trauma. Her fragmented self is reflected beautifully in the story-telling by the author which flows from the past to present and the past again. I sometimes get confused when the timeline is jumpy in a story, but I managed to keep up with Dogs at the Perimeter and I think that’s because it just made sense and mirrored where Janie was at in dealing with her past.

Janie’s friend Hiroji, a Japanese neurologist in Canada goes missing and she moves into his apartment and begins to piece together her past and present and ultimately her future. Hiroji’s story is told through the eyes of Janie. He is driven to track down his brother James, a doctor who went missing during the war.

Through glimpses of the past in each of these character’s lives, it brings together the various fragments of their lives and a broader understanding of their current functioning. I think what stood out most for me, was “the unknown’ that many people of the war have to endure. The uncertainties of whether their loved ones survived or perished, whether they died of natural causes or were brutally murdered or whether they could still be out there with a new name, new family and a hazy recollection of what their lives once were.

Dogs at the Perimeter was a novel that I was drawn to because I loved travelling through Cambodia when I was overseas a couple of years ago and how the day I visited the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum will stay with me forever. I have quite an interest in Cambodia’s recent war history and have read several autobiographies from survivors of the war. The author of Dogs at the Perimeter has provided a vivid account of the wartime using fictional characters that could very easily be real-life memoirs.

For those with an interest in the effects of trauma, war and in particular Cambodia’s history, then I’d highly recommend picking up this book to read.
...more

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Apr 25, 2014 Rena Graham rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

This was a follow up read after breezing through her first book - of short stories. This novel is far different and definitely not as breezy to read. I felt it to be more dense, more studied and more exact. Some of the metaphors Thien uses make my head spin, wondering how she could have come up with something so apt. The title is perhaps the most telling one of all as it tells of how the protagonist learned to live her life, through hardships unimaginable.

Annabel Lyon said "Madeline Thien write ...more

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Jan 11, 2018 Gin Jenny (Reading the End) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: aftermath, historical-fiction, siblings, genocide

A beautifully written book about the aftermath of genocide for several people who were caught up in it. At times, I struggled to follow which timeline was currently happening -- flashback or present day? -- and the plot moved pretty slowly. Not a perfect book, but a vivid depiction of choices, compromises, and identity under an autocratic regime.

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Aug 11, 2016 MisterHobgoblin rated it liked it

Dogs At The Perimeter is a flawed novel.

Loosely, it is about the separation, dislocation and loss of identity caused by the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. We open in Vancouver with a woman, Janie, a neurological researcher looking for her colleague, Hiroji who has gone missing some three months earlier. Both Janie and Hiroji have ties to Cambodia – for Janie, it was the country of her childhood; for Hiroji it is where his brother disappeared in 1975.

What follows are a series of narrations, some s Dogs At The Perimeter is a flawed novel.

Loosely, it is about the separation, dislocation and loss of identity caused by the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. We open in Vancouver with a woman, Janie, a neurological researcher looking for her colleague, Hiroji who has gone missing some three months earlier. Both Janie and Hiroji have ties to Cambodia – for Janie, it was the country of her childhood; for Hiroji it is where his brother disappeared in 1975.

What follows are a series of narrations, some set in 1970s Cambodia and some set in later (uncertain) times. The narratives can flick back and forth, use multiple points of view and characters change their names as various points in their lives. It is difficult to piece together a coherent narrative from the fragments – made all the more difficult by every key event being shrouded in opaque language. It probably could be pieced together but the characters all seem rather wooden and it hardly seems worth the effort.

There are some positives. The description of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge are written with a care and compassion. Yes, there were atrocities, but this was set against daily life, hope, ideologies. Some of the Khmer Rouge were kind idealists and some of the rural people (the old people) were welcoming towards the displaced urban people (the new people). However, the good was far outweighed by the bad – the arbitrariness of decisions and behaviours; the shortage of food; the mistrust of education; and the suspicion and intolerance of dissent. There are scenes of the evacuation of Phnom Penh; scenes in the villages; and scenes in a prison. Powerful though these scenes are, they are quite similar to Vaddey Ratner’s (far superior) Shadow Of The Banyan, suggesting that the two novels may have drawn their material from the same source.

Alas, the positives do not outweigh the negatives. The story of Hiroji is disjointed and the structure is wrong. Hiroji’s mystery is mentioned very briefly at the outset and is then followed by Janie’s story, only for Janie to be abandoned and Hiroji revisited at the end in a time sequence that frequently left the reader imaging one era and one character whilst then metamorphosing into someone else, somewhere else and at some other time. Much as one would like to express solidarity with those brave people who survived this awful time, it does not redeem a flawed novel. ...more

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Feb 03, 2016 Emmkay rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, canadian, war-and-peace, 2016-reads

Beautifully written, complex, and thoughtful novel about the impact of war, disappearance, and genocide. The protagonist, Janie, is a young electrophysicist and mother in Montreal, who arrived in Canada as an unaccompanied child refugee from Cambodia. Her mentor disappears, and she is convinced that he has gone to search for his long-lost brother, who vanished in Cambodia during the genocide. Janie's own sense of self begins to fracture, and she has trouble reconciling the different 'selves' she ...more

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Feb 14, 2016 Louise rated it really liked it

Shelves: canadian

A beautifully written book about haunting and harrowing effects of genocide, war, and loss, during and after the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the late 70s. Written in fragments, about fragmented lives and fragmented relationships in a fragmented country, Thien blends beauty and atrocity, with seamless fluidity.

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Dec 28, 2011 Stephen rated it it was amazing

OH MY GOD! Madeleine Thien; you have such beautiful prose! If you wrote a technical manual, I bet I would still read it.

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Jan 01, 2018 Janine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018

This is the kind of novel that generates its own light. Madeleine Thien's writing - about trauma, grief, loss of self, war, memory, and kindness - is lovely beyond measure. ...more

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Jan 17, 2018 Lidi Steffen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: language-english, 030-cambodia, 032-canada

Really liked the story, confusing as it might be, specially because I was visiting Cambodia in the meanwhile, it gave more insight of the cruelty this people suffered and the strong need they have.

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Jun 20, 2018 Nina R. Birnbaum rated it really liked it · review of another edition

painful but what an impressive writer. I would read anything by her

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Jun 03, 2020 Klaas Roggeman rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: asia, war, canada

While trying to travel the world through books, I stumbled this week on this book which mainly deals with a very sad period of Asian history. Janie is a scientist in Montréal, Canada, but still struggles with her past in Cambodia. She managed to flee the country from the scourge of the Khmer Rouge*. She lives separated from her husband and son, while searching for her friend Hiroji, a fellow scientist. His brother James went missing in Cambodia while working for the Red Cross. In parts you get t ...more

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Feb 22, 2019 Cristina Lai rated it liked it · review of another edition

What I learned from Thien's previous works is to just embrace the haziness of her narrative - the nonlinear, the impossible - and you will also find moments of intense clarity in the dreamscapes. I especially appreciated the revealing/progression of Janie's story. On one hand I wished her bonds with Navin and Kiri were elevated more, but I also think that keeping the focus on her story reveals more about the specific difficulties in bearing and suppressing trauma as a woman. The intangible aspec ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 Arthur Van Erps rated it it was amazing

A collection of interwoven stories concerning three souls who were severely affected by the war in Cambodia. Especially the arc of the main character, Janie, was gripping in its painful details and gave a glimpse into how sad life is during wartime. Overall the book contains beautiful passages and extraordinarily crafted sentences that were so poetic I reread them multiple times. There is some discontinuation between parts of the book which possibly could be bothersome to a few people. Not for m ...more

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Aug 21, 2017 Joy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley-reviews

Exploring the deep, long-lasting trauma that follows historical atrocities, this book follows a Cambodian who escapes to Canada, and a Canadian who travels to and becomes trapped in Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. There are some gripping passages, but the book becomes scattered in places and more intellectual than heartfelt. Despite its inconsistencies, it is a worthwhile read.

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Oct 16, 2017 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: travel-the-world

Although, I think Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a better book, Dogs at the Perimeter is good, and similar to the aforementioned book in it's style. What I like is that the book is set in Cambodia during Pol Pot's reign of terror. ...more

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Jul 02, 2019 Tami rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Another fascinating read by Madeline Thien!!! In this one, the impact of being caught up in the war in Cambodia in the mid-70s, has Janie, starting to come undone, along with one of her colleagues who lost his brother in Cambodia at the same time. The back story is heart wrenching and powerful with great redemption in the end. Read this!

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Feb 18, 2021 Ryan Mishap rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

Excited to explore the other books by Thien as her Do Not Say We Have Nothing was a masterpiece.

This novel isn't as sweeping and layered, but it is a harsh, evocative, and melancholy exploration of how the self can fracture, be disappeared, and react to trauma and loss. ...more

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Jan 09, 2019 kp rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Searching, often harrowing, gently hopeful novel.

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Feb 15, 2018 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I'd like everything by Thien to be published in the United States.

My BookPage review https://bookpage.com/reviews/21827-ma... ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 Enchanted Prose rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Broken memories, broken souls, and a broken country (Montreal 2005; flashbacks to the Cambodian genocide 1975-1979): Madeleine Thien is a literary star in Canada. She ought to be one in America too.

If only Dogs at the Perimeter was dystopian fiction. Yet historically, Thien’s searing novel really did happen. Which makes her sensitive approach to telling horrific history more laudable.

Thien focuses on the psychic trauma to survivors of unimaginable horrors when “nothing seemed real.” What happens ...more

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About Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien

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Madeleine Thien was born in Vancouver. She is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001), and three novels, Certainty (2006); Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), shortlisted for Berlin’s International Literature Prize and winner of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis; and Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016), about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservat ...more

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“After surgery, he told his doctors that the pain was exactly as it was, but he did not feel it as greatly. “It’s as if,” he had said, a cool blandness in his eyes, “the pain is not being done to me.” One day, maybe in a ten years, or fifty years, a surgeon will be able to do this with disturbing precision, destroy a whirlpool of memory, an entire system of feelings, but in the meantime it’s like taking a hatchet to a spider’s web.” — 0 likes

“By early 1979, the border area is a dead-eyed, stinking hell. He signs on as an aid worker with the Red Cross and they give him a stipend and a room. In January, the Vietnamese Communists crossed the Cambodian border, swept the Khmer Rouge aside, and took Phnom Penh in less than two weeks. The refugees wash up in their black clothes, so debilitated and disturbed that Hiroji thinks he is walking through an exhumed cemetery, they are more soil and sickness than human beings.” — 0 likes

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Preview — Dogs at the Perimeter by Madeleine Thien

Dogs at the Perimeter

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About Madeleine Thien

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