Phnom Penh, 1975 – The Cambodian capital is evacuated by the Khmer Rouge and transformed into a ghost town. Moments later, the reader heads south into a Khmer Rouge reeducation camp and adopts the point of view of a newly displaced villager. Born in the Year of the Rabbit, 1975, cartoonist Tian Veasna captures the events of the Cambodian genocide as they unfold.
Much like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, in which Spiegelman transforms his father’s recordings onto the pages of his comic book, Veasna recounts his father’s memories of the Khmer Rouge with historical accuracy. While sometimes harrowing and heavy, Veasna juxtaposes light and dark offering readers intimate glimpses of love and hope between family members in hand drawn photographs.

A poignant and deeply moving account of one of the darkest periods in Cambodian history—and a family’s survival.
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Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna, translated from French by Helge Dascher, Drawn & Quarterly
Published in France by Gallimard under the titles: L’année du lièvre, T.1, Au revoir Phnom Penh; L’année du lièvre, T.2, Ne vous inquiétez pas; L’année du lièvre, T. 3, Un nouveau départ

Angelica So

Angelica So is a California native who earned her Ph.D. in French literature at Emory University. She was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Emory and a Mellon Teaching Fellow at the University of New Mexico. Her articles on Southeast Asian Francophone literature have been published in journals such as The French Review, Genocide Studies and Prevention, and Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. A Francophone literary scholar, and a member of the Asie du Sud Est Research Network (ASERN), Angelica So is the English language book buyer at Albertine.

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