Zadie Smith, The Embassy of Cambodia

Veronika Schuchter (The Nottingham Trent University)
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Zadie Smith’s narrative was first published as a story in a 2013 digital issue of

The New Yorker

and can still be accessed on the magazine’s website free of charge, before it was picked up by Hamish Hamilton and released as small hardcover book that same year.  It follows the protagonist Fatou, a young woman from Ivory Coast, who works under slave-like conditions for an abusive family in North London. As the story unfolds, the reader learns that she most likely resides in the United Kingdom illegally, after having braved a difficult journey through Libya and Italy before reaching London, which limits her prospects in Europe significantly. Smith’s timely piece on the hardships of (forced) migration focuses on the life-story of a single character in an almost

bildungsromanesque

1183 words

Citation: Schuchter, Veronika. "The Embassy of Cambodia". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 June 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35875, accessed 09 December 2024.]

35875 The Embassy of Cambodia 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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