Life in Washington DC is trying to ‘return to normal’ after the trauma of September 11, 2001. George W. Bush is President and Hillary Clinton, former First Lady and now Senator for New York, already has her eye on higher things. One morning Su Soeung, who first came to the US as a child refugee from Cambodia receives an intriguing job offer. So begins an extraordinary train of events. Su’s efforts to discover the fate of her father who ‘disappeared’ during Cambodia’s Pol Pot nightmare, seem to be inextricably intertwined with world politics at the highest level. Just how much did the US know about Pol Pot and his band of ‘brothers’? What deals were done between Washington and Beijing? And, in the end, is Su Soeung just a puppet of forces beyond her control? This is Stanley Johnson’s 11th — and finest — literary thriller yet — tense, provocative, and deeply resonant of our current times, as conspiracy theory and trauma once again put question marks over the aims of the superpowers.
