The General (Paperback)

Swain is shamelessly nostalgic for Cambodia as he first encountered it--as a very young Briton just out of the French Foreign Legion. It was a place where he could frequent prostitutes, wilt away the afternoons in opium dens, and belong to an elite group of white foreign men living in Phonm Penh's best hotel.

He pays scant attention to the fact that the French Colonial legacy in Southeast Asia is what made it possible for him to frolick with abandon in another people's land and call it "paradise." It's this reputation that still drives countless western male tourists to this poverty-stricken, post-colonial, war-torn country in search of "affordable" pleasures. Swain romanticizes those issues by saying the scene was less "brash" (i.e. tourist-oriented) in the early 70s. His utter lack of CAMBODIAN perspective on the legacies of French Colonialism is disturbing.

But Swain is a journalist, not a scholar. As is typical with journalists who write historical accounts, such important historical background and perspective is missing and any insight the reader gets is personal. At one point in the book, Swain gives us an insincere justification for why he went back to Cambodia for its darkest hour, and tells us no, it was not for adventure thrill-seeking nor visions of journalistic heroism, but "I don't know." Somehow I don't believe that.

Swain writes evocatively and his book should serve as a handy introduction to Indochina and its travails for foreigners little in the know. But there's this, too, to say about "River of Time": rather than a panorama of scenes and events, Swain provides several vignettes of them (from Saigon at war to Phnom Penh at its fall to the Khmer Rouge and to Bangkok at peace from it all). And that's my gripe about "River of Time." Without clear guiding narrative strings and conclusions, it reads like several touched-up newspaper articles blended together and joined by only one unifying theme: Swain himself. Too bad, because the book is chock-full of revealing anecdotes, thanks to Swain's well-honed eye and prodigious memory (as well as contemporary diary notes). The stories about Vietnamese boat people's suffering at the hands of Thai fishermen-turned-pirates are perhaps the best in the whole book.

But don't let me put you off an interesting, if somewhat lacking read. For all its flaws, "River of Time" is worth your money and time -- if only in whetting your appetite for other books about this hauntingly beautiful but deeply troubled land.