Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter": Love story with a political backdrop

While sold as fantasy, this is primarily a political story. Set in Cambodia - with a love affair, & some ghosts - to make it colorful.

Good thing about the story is its readability. This is single sitting reading material - though I took a couple of coffee breaks.

Bad points are:

1. Love story is pretty mundane.
2. Political story - the main point - is something I cannot quite take seriously. My experience with stories about India by Western authors is that they nearly always trivialize the important, & are based on half-baked knowledge & no understanding. In spite of rare exceptions, & occasional very welcome outsider's perspective. To learn about political situation in Cambodia, I would much rather read something by a Cambodian. Your mileage on this might vary - it's a personal thing - what sources to trust for what kind of information.
   

None of this comes in the way of story's readability. Very good enjoy & forget story.

Full text of this story is available online.

Story summary.
Saloth Sar aka Pol Pot was a dictator (or at least an important strong man - I didn't quite catch) of Cambodia, now dead. Sith is his daughter - the heroine of this story. She lives alone in a haunted house in Phnom Penh. Her mother lives with her people in Thailand, & mother/daughter don't get along well.

Sith is living a comfortable secluded life of luxury - thanks to bad money stashed by her dad in a Swiss bank account & a helpful government. She is 18, & the year is 2004. That is when she meets 24 year old Dara, a salesman at a cellphone shop called Hello Phones in a local mall. They fall in love. Fearing she will lose him, she lies to him about her birth. That helps drag love affair a bit to falling-apart & eventually-reuniting kind of happy ending.

Political part of the story is of the ghosts of the victims of her dad's atrocities that haunt her. And of her eventual reconciliation with them.

See also.

1. Apparently, Saloth Sar aka Pol Pot aka Tol Saut aka Pol Porth was a real historical person - roughly in the same role described in this story. And he had a daughter, "born, as she is in the story, in 1986, when her father was 60" & named Sitha. This review of the story by Matthew Cheney is longer, more literary, & contains new information. Here is a more succinct biography of Pol Pot.
   

Fact sheet.
Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter, short story, review
First published: Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct 2006
Rating: B
Nominated for Hugo Awards 2007 in novelette category
Nominated for World Fantasy Award 2007 in Short Fiction category
Passed the preliminary nominations stage of Nebula Awards 2007 in novelette category.

Related: All Hugo Award stories.