The Disappeared

A fiercely beautiful love story for the ages, The Disappeared traces one woman’s three-decades-long journey from the peaceful streets of Montreal to the war-torn villages of Cambodia, as a brief affair turns into a grand passion of loss and remembrance, set against one of the most brutal genocides of our time. When sixteen-year-old Anne Greves first meets Serey, a Cambodian student forced to leave his country during the rise of the Khmer Rouge, she never considers the consequences of their complicated romance. Swept up in the infatuation of young love, Anne ignores her father’s wishes and embraces her relationship with Serey in Montreal’s smoky jazz clubs and in his cramped yellow bedroom. But when the borders of Cambodia are reopened, Serey must risk his life to return home in search of his family. A decade later, Anne will travel halfway around the world to find him, and to save their love from the same tragic forces that first brought them together. In aching, tender prose, Kim Echlin challenges our notions of how to both claim the past of move on after insufferable loss. Part elegy, part love letter, part call to arms, The Disappeared is a soaring tribute to those who have disappeared in the violent conflicts throughout history.