Review of The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
Rating: 5 out of 5
#QOTD: What’s your favourite novella?
Apart from this one, my favourite is The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer.
This lil guy was not quite a novella but was much longer than a short story. It weaves a story about Fatou, a live-in domestic worker and nanny from Ivory Coast who works for an Asian family Darawels in Willesden, North West London. It starts and ends at the same place: outside the Cambodian Embassy in London.
The story is written from Fatou’s viewpoint as she reflects on her daily life and her surroundings. Her days are spent working in this home and her only time out of the house is to do grocery shopping. She does get time off to go to church on a Sunday which she follows up with tea with a fellow economic migrant Andrew, who comes from Nigeria.
Fatou sneaks in a weekly swim on a Monday morning at her employers’ gym using passes she takes from the house. Swimming is her refuge, it is where she is weightless, free and unencumbered. The only time in her story where she can be on equal footing with those around her. It is during her walks to and from the gym, and her swims, where she reflects on life and the hardships she has faced in her short life. Fatou reflects with no air of shame or feeling sorry for herself but rather in a frank manner.
Through this story, Zadie Smith touches on issues of indentured servitude, the harsh treatment inflicted on migrant workers by their employers such as having passports taken from them and not being paid a living wage, race relations, micro-aggressions and dating tourism. Heavy topics. Smith weaved these all into a short, but very important not-quite-novella length story.
My favourite quote from the story is:
“surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?”
#equity #equality #refugee #migrant #pay #fairtreatment #zadie #smith #novella #shortstory #favourite #heavy #hamishhamilton #hamilton #penguin #imprint #brownbookstagrammer #sammikoalareads #bipocbook
