Three Flames

"Lightman's best book since Einstein's Dreams . . . a piercing story of social dissolution in damaged Cambodia . . . an important story of global women's rights." —Annie Proulx

The stories of one Cambodian family are intricately braided together in Alan Lightman's first work of fiction in seven years.

Three Flames portrays the struggles of a Cambodian farming family against the extreme patriarchal attitudes of their society and a cruel and dictatorial father, set in a rural community that is slowly being exposed to the modern world and its values. Ryna is a mother fighting against memories of her father's death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and her powerful desire for revenge. Daughter Nita is married off at sixteen to a wandering husband, while her sister Thida is sent to the city to work in the factories to settle their father's gambling debt. Kamal, the only son, dreams of marrying the most beautiful girl in the village and...