The Gate: A Memoir

In 1971 a young French ethnologist named Francois Bizot was taken prisoner by forces of the Khmer Rouge who kept him chained in a jungle camp for months before releasing him. Four years later Bizot became the intermediary between the now victorious Khmer Rouge and the occupants of the besieged French embassy in Phnom Penh, eventually leading a desperate convoy of foreigners to safety across the Thai border.

Out of those ordeals comes this transfixing book. At its center lies the relationship between Bizot and his principal captor, a man named Douch, who is today known as the most notorious of the Khmer Rouge's torturers but who, for a while, was Bizot's protector and friend. Written with the immediacy of a great novel, unsparing in its understanding of evil, The Gate manages to be at once wrenching and redemptive.

Author: Francois Bizot
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 01/06/2004
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.20w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780375727238

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 01/11/2004 pg. 24

About the Author
Francois Bizot is an ethnologist who has spent the greater part of his career studying Buddhism. He is the Director of Studies at Ecole Pratique des Hautes-etudes and holds the chair in Southeast Asian Buddhism at the Sorbonne. He lives in Paris.