About book The Embassy Of Cambodia: Short Story (2013)
Earlier today I called my local Dymocks to ask them to put a book on hold for me. When I got down there I had a look around the store and almost walked straight past this tiny book tucked into a shelf among the others. I bought it, took it home, and read it straight away.“The Embassy of Cambodia” follows the story of Fatou, a girl originally from Africa, who has made her way from hardship to hardship to end up as a nanny/cleaner for an awful family in England. Her only escape is to steal guest passes for the local health club from the hallway and swim, on the way there staring at the space just above the tall brick fencing around the ‘Embassy of Cambodia’ where she can see a shuttlecock going back and forth every Monday at the same time. The story was quite vague for the most part, and I think it would have been better a bit longer with a bit more detail. That being said, a lot of the characters in the book reminded me of people I knew in real life, and on the whole it was quite relatable. Quite an enjoyable short story. 3 ½ stars. In a mere 60 pages or so, less if you take away the wide margins, Zadie Smith manages to convey such concise thoughts and feelings of an immigrant living the life of a domestic help. There is a point in the novella where Fatou questions if she is a "slave," but comes to the conclusion that she isn't a prisoner because of her accessibility to the outside world, albeit a limited one. Her employees provide her with a metro card and doesn't hit her, with exceptions, so she must be as free as any employed person. In here lies the powerful insight into what it means to be a foreigner in a distant land, a person treated with inequality, and a woman finding her voice in the world.That being said, "The Embassy of Cambodia" ends off in just an abrupt way as it starts off, but I suppose that's how the middle bit really shone for me. The badminton-playing and shuttlecocks references seemed pointless, but there is a nice parallel drawn between the Embassy of Cambodia and Fatou's own experiences. It's my first foray into the words of Zadie Smith, and I'm definitely interested in exploring it more since I've heard nothing but good praises.
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Mooie novelle, goed geschreven. Toch vooral een leuk tussendoortje, niet echt veel meer...
—jjimenez
