The Gate – Francois Bizot                      9/10

The Gate details the experiences of Francois Bizot, a French ethnologist in Cambodia during the turbulent rise of the Khmer Rouge, as he recounts two episodes: a period of imprisonment in the jungle in 1971 and then as the official interpreter for foreigners in 1975 during the fall of Phnom Penh.

It is very difficult to find fault with this book. At first I thought it did not quite display the horror I was expecting; as Bizot writes with a description that sounds surprisingly human. Yet as the book progresses there is a creeping element of urgency, despair and fear which mirrors the events and is perhaps in parallel with the rise of the Khmer Rouge as a whole.

Bizot recounts two main events from his time in Cambodia, where he had lived for some years prior to the episodes described. The first section of the book deals with him being captured during the guerrilla war in 1971 and taken to a prison camp in the jungle. Here he is kept prisoner for several months and is interrogated by the now infamous Douch, his every answer being carefully judged and weighed against his survival.

The main theme of this first section is the psychological aspect of imprisonment. He strikes up an unlikely rapport with his captor and perhaps because he is intelligent, or perhaps because he is a French national, he is treated with slightly more leniency than the other prisoners. That being said, this time has clearly had a strong mental impact on the writer and it is a fascinating read.

The second section is equally as spellbinding however. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh and after a tense meeting between their leaders and some of the foreign diplomats in the city, Bizot is chosen as the lead interpreter and the only foreigner that is allowed to leave the diplomatic compound until their evacuation is organised.

His primary role thereafter is to find food for the 500-1000 ex-pats that are situated in the city, as well as maintain diplomatic relations with the Khmer Rouge military. As the city descends into chaos and anarchy, this becomes an increasingly difficult task.

As someone who knew very little about this dark period of human history, I found The Gate terrifyingly captivating. Bizot’s use of language is flowery at times, but he is adept at building an impending sense of expectation that weighs on the conscious of the reader. He has clearly seen things that you or I will never see, and he has had to make decisions that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

I don’t want to give any more of the tale away, so I urge you to read it for yourself.