Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine

(Paperback)

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Equipped with the sensitivity known from his earlier reportages, in Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine, Wojciech Tochman addresses people with mental illnesses in Cambodia who are imprisoned in kennels, chained up, and locked in cellsoften by their own families, who are desperate and at a loss for what to do. Doctors from the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization, in turn, face a great challenge in helping these people because there are only fifty psychiatrists in a country of sixteen million people. Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine approaches both the doctors and their patients with empathy, and also highlights the countrys other social problems, such as slave labor or the lack of sensitivity in society.

A thematic continuation of Polish journalist Tochmans self-described "dark triptych" about societies affected by genocides, Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine presents a portrait of a Cambodia in which the memory of the Khmer Rouge terror is still alive, where the nation is suffering from a trauma referred to as baksbat, or broken courage syndrome.

Reviews

"Wojciech Tochman [. . .] decided to create a picture of today's Cambodia and its inhabitants living in the shadow of genocide. The basis of this image is a man in whom feelings have died. As Tochman writes: 'A stranger is not here to be touched. [. . .] Not too close between the spouses. Also between parents and children. [. . .] People were shot in the head for feelings here.' When there are no feelings, indifference reigns. So we read about the fate of mentally ill people, whose families keep in cages, chained to a rod with a shackle, naked and shoving themselves under each other. Sometimes there seem to be too many of these descriptions."--Nike Literary Prize Jury

Author Bio

Wojciech Tochman (b. 1969) is one of the best-known Polish journalists and the author of nine books. His books of reportage have been published in English, French, Arabic, Swedish, Finnish, Slovak, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and Bosnian. His book Like Eating a Stone was a finalist for the Nike Literary Prize and for the Prix Tmoin du Monde, awarded by Radio France International. It was published in English by Granta in 2008. Tochman runs the Polish Reportage Institute together with Pawel Goliski and Mariusz Szczygiel.

Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists, including Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Jacek Dehnel, Mariusz Szczygiel, and Artur Domoslawski. She has been a mentor for the Emerging Translator Mentorship Program and co-chair of the UK Translators Association. In 2018 she was honored with Poland's Transatlantyk Award for the most outstanding promoter of Polish literature abroad.