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Instead, Dunlop gives an account of his own, personal
journey, not just through the cities and countryside of
Cambodia but through the country’s history and how
his own history has intertwined with it. The reader,
then, accompanies Dunlop as he tries to come to grips
with understanding Cambodia as a foreigner, as his
learning and perceptions of the country he is fascinated
by shift and change over time – and as he questions his
own opinions and perspectives about prosecuting the
Khmer Rouge commanders, and the very nature of how
justice can be achieved and carried out. Integral to this
journey – and a vital part of this book – are the personal
testimonies of those Dunlop meets who were both victim
and perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities.
It is these conversations that transform the historical
narrative by placing those momentous events in the
context of their impact on individuals, where they stop
being lost in history, if only for a moment, and become
real people again. For all the citing of numbers and
statistics to measure and somehow quantify the vastness
of Cambodia’s nightmare, reading these accounts
are what provide the true expression of the murderous
insanity that befell the country.
The Lost Executioner, then, is a complex book, both
in its attempt to avoid simplifying the recent history
of Cambodia and in Dunlop’s own acknowledgement
of the flux of his own thoughts about it. But, perhaps
because Dunlop’s profession is as a photographer, there
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is never a sense of getting lost within his narrative. His
prose has a real composure to it – it’s extremely simple
without being simplistic, and there is not one verbose
word or overwrought sentence here. The understated
tone of Dunlop’s journalism allows the appalling facts
of his narrative to speak for themselves far more clearly.
Without wanting to sound flippant, the search for
Comrade Duch does also have a bit of Boy’s Own adventure
to it – and, to be frank, a somewhat suicidal one
too. Dunlop has worked in South East Asia for several
years and is well versed in Asian protocol to be sure, but
to decide to go looking for one of the Khmer Rouge’s
key figures would seem to be asking for trouble. Cambodia
is safe for tourists these days, but outside of the
cities it is still easy for people to disappear. I’ll refrain
from writing anymore about the outcome of his search
for fear of creating a spoiler; I’ll only say that it is a
truly remarkable story.
A section in the middle of The Lost Executioner is the
abiding – and troubling – memory I retain of reading it.
Within the rarefied confines of New York’s Museum
Of Modern Art, an exhibition of photos taken at Tuol
Sleng was commissioned, with an accompanying coffee
table book. The photos have become iconic – black and
white, each individual in the black loose clothes of the
Khmer Rouge against a white wall. They are the photos
that were taken on admission at Tuol Sleng – and the
taking of those photos were effectively the signing of
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