Scan barcode
A review by afrathefish
The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
3.75
3.75 - 4 - going to let this settle before i give it a final rating
my first foray into zadie smith’s work, and honestly i’m left a little baffled and dumbfounded by the actual ingenuity behind this book. so many things said, about the nuances of multiculturalism and our place in the world, about daily hardships and the little joys and liberties we take to escaping our realities, about belonging, history, identity and the human condition. this work was meant to be studied, and again it makes me deeply desire taking a course in literature, because books like this were meant to be taken apart and studied deeply.
i’ve also seen nothing else quite describe the actual immigrant experience as well as this, and tackle the nuances of immigration in the west as well as this. though i’m not the biggest fan of how the south asian community was at times represented here, though i understand that’s a personal bias on account of my background, it goes without saying that situations here are very much commonplace, as uncomfortable as it is to talk about.
there was also such a distinctly… london feel about this book that goes outside of the red telephone boxes and london eye and the big ben. it’s a sort of feel only a londoner will understand - this cultural clusterfuck of a city where there’s too many people and not enough connections, where you’ll meet a friend who’s spent too many years in too many places at a ‘vietnamese’ cafe called foley’s that serves nasi goreng… everything is a clusterfuck here and it’s hard to belong but yet everything fits and it’s hard to put into words that sort of sharp array of a million experiences flooding your plane of existence at all times.
saying this however, i wish i was able to connect more with the book. reading this felt akin to reading “heroes” by robert cormier, whereby i deeply attached to the themes and the meanings and the work from a very analytical standpoint, but not directly for the words written on the page, or the characters that guide us through the narrative. i’m going back and fourth between whether my attachment for these themes overrides the sort of detachment i felt from the narrative while i was reading.
all in all though, i struggle to fault the book, because it’s not the books fault i didn’t want to shag it. i do want to shag the themes though, and the various techniques zadie smith used to beautifully portray the idea of belonging amid a place that’s categorically not welcoming to you.
my first foray into zadie smith’s work, and honestly i’m left a little baffled and dumbfounded by the actual ingenuity behind this book. so many things said, about the nuances of multiculturalism and our place in the world, about daily hardships and the little joys and liberties we take to escaping our realities, about belonging, history, identity and the human condition. this work was meant to be studied, and again it makes me deeply desire taking a course in literature, because books like this were meant to be taken apart and studied deeply.
i’ve also seen nothing else quite describe the actual immigrant experience as well as this, and tackle the nuances of immigration in the west as well as this. though i’m not the biggest fan of how the south asian community was at times represented here, though i understand that’s a personal bias on account of my background, it goes without saying that situations here are very much commonplace, as uncomfortable as it is to talk about.
there was also such a distinctly… london feel about this book that goes outside of the red telephone boxes and london eye and the big ben. it’s a sort of feel only a londoner will understand - this cultural clusterfuck of a city where there’s too many people and not enough connections, where you’ll meet a friend who’s spent too many years in too many places at a ‘vietnamese’ cafe called foley’s that serves nasi goreng… everything is a clusterfuck here and it’s hard to belong but yet everything fits and it’s hard to put into words that sort of sharp array of a million experiences flooding your plane of existence at all times.
saying this however, i wish i was able to connect more with the book. reading this felt akin to reading “heroes” by robert cormier, whereby i deeply attached to the themes and the meanings and the work from a very analytical standpoint, but not directly for the words written on the page, or the characters that guide us through the narrative. i’m going back and fourth between whether my attachment for these themes overrides the sort of detachment i felt from the narrative while i was reading.
all in all though, i struggle to fault the book, because it’s not the books fault i didn’t want to shag it. i do want to shag the themes though, and the various techniques zadie smith used to beautifully portray the idea of belonging amid a place that’s categorically not welcoming to you.