The Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia

by Hélène Cixous, Juliet Flower MacCannell (Introduction), Judith Pike (Introduction)

No contemporary French feminist has made a bigger impact in America than Hélène Cixous. Brilliant, bold, and combative, author of numerous novels and a gargantuan study of James Joyce, and sponsor of a series of notorious seminars at the University of Paris about women's writing, she has exploited the roles of femme fatale and maitresse d'education in a career that has been spectacularly defiant and productive. Sihanouk is one of Cixous's most ambitious the dramatic portrayal of the conflicts between old and new, East and West, North and South, religion and politics. At its center is the figure of Norodom Sihanouk. Vain when a prince, as king Sihanouk discovered his responsibility to his country and came to embody Cambodia. He used every means to keep his country growing, healthy, and out of the wars of Southeast Asia that consumed Laos and Vietnam. Cixous recognized in Sihanouk a historical figure as fascinating as a tragic king in a man of uncommon intelligence on whom his country's history pivoted, a man placed by fate into a world of bad choices and surrounded by powerful and relentless antagonists. But Sihanouk gave Cixous something a king who is indisputably modern, who has read and loved Shakespeare, and whose story continues. First published in 1985, the play begins with Sihanouk's abdication in 1955 and ends with his arrest by the Khmer Rouge two decades later. The destiny of an entire country unfolds through the fifty characters who appear on stage.

Genres: Plays, Theatre

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Hélène Cixous is a Jewish-French, Algerian-born feminist well-known as one of the founders of poststructuralist feminist theory along with Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. She is now a professor of English Literature at University of Paris VIII and chairs the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines which she founded in 1974.

She has published numerous essays, playwrights, novels, poems, and literary criticism. Her academic works concern subjects of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate them all, those who haven't the noble courage to hate,
And those who are mere dilettantes in hatred, paying it lip-service on tiptoe.
O hatred, I shall do you justice.
Hatred, you are power, you are intelligence.
And I dare proclaim you
The true Sun of my destiny.

So espouses an aspiring Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) rather early in this epic, amazing play. Cixous's triumph sprawls across 20 years of tumultuous history in Cambodia as the titular monarch Sihanouk juggles the interests of East and West while the Khmer Rouge wait in the wings for Kissinger's airborne disaster (clandestine bombing) to completely alienate the countryside, thus clearing the way to Year Zero. There is a tension in the play between Tradition and Modernity. Progress appears suspicious in such light. Ideology clears away the gray areas where Nixon and Pol Pot see only purity as a goal.

Chew on that notion for a while. (Cixous accomplishes a retelling of Hamlet, albeit with a folder of mixed messages)

This is an astonishing view on history. I highly recommend such.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most amazing plays i've ever read

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fine enough, but I’m really just not a play person

[Bert Huisman]

6 t8

[Eino Yasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to read it.