Kim Echlin Libros

From the internationally bestselling and Giller-shortlisted author comes a poetic novel about war, loss, and the resilience of women. Eleven years after her intimate year with Kosmos in Paris, Gota, now a journalist for a Toronto travel magazine, learns of a film festival in Sarajevo where Kosmos will be with his theatre company. She takes the assignment to explore the aftermath of the Bosnian war and hopes to reconnect with him. Upon their reunion, she discovers a man and a country transformed beyond recognition. In a small café, Kosmos introduces Gota to Edina, the new woman in his life. As Gota navigates her complex feelings for Kosmos, she and Edina develop an unexpected bond. Edina, a formidable lawyer, reveals the sexual violence she and many others endured. What begins as a journey of rekindled love evolves into a passionate quest for justice, as Gota is determined to amplify their stories. Her life becomes intertwined with a community of women, leading her to The Hague to confront their abusers. The experiences Gota documents and the stories she hears will alter her life forever. Written in masterful prose, this tale of resilience explores the power of speaking out against those who seek to silence the truth.

A sixteen year old girl falls in love with a Cambodian student. A revolutionary closes the borders of a country for four years. Families, friends, lovers disappear. Kim Echlin’s powerful new novel tells the story of Anne Greves, from Montreal, who meets Serey, a Cambodian student forced into exile when he cannot return home during Pol Pot’s time of terror. Anne and Serey meet in a jazz club where their shared passion for music turns into a passion for each other, against the will of her father. But when the borders of Cambodia open, Serey is compelled to return home, alone, to try to find his family. Left behind, and without word from her lover, Anne tries to build a new life but she cannot forget her first love. She decides to travel to the war-ravaged country that claimed Serey. What she finds there is a traumatized and courageous people struggling to create new freedoms out of the tragedy that claimed their traditional ways, their livelihood, and a seventh of their population. “Despair is an unwitnessed life,” writes Anne as she searches for the truth, about her lover, and about herself. “If we live long enough, we have to tell, or turn to stone inside.” From its first page, The Disappeared takes us into the land of kings and temples, fought over for generations. It reveals the forces that act on love everywhere: family, politics, forgetting. Universal in its questions about how to claim the past, how to honor our dead, and how to go on after those we love disappear, it is a story written in spare and rhythmic prose. The Disappeared is a remarkable consideration of language, truth, justice, and memory that speaks to the conscience of the world, and to love, even when those we love most are gone.