The Gate

Fran-ois Bizot is a French ethnologist who has spent the greater part of his career studying Buddhism. He is the Director of Studies at the -cole Pratique des Hautes--tudes and holds the chair in South-East-Asian Buddhism at the Sorbonne.

Selected as a Book of the Year in 2017 in the Scottish Herald 
 
'The beauty of the prose is in contrast with the horror anticipated by this superbly subtle narrative' Kapka Kassabova 
 
In 1971, on a routine outing through the Cambodian countryside, the young French ethnologist Fran-ois Bizot is captured by the Khmer Rouge. Accused of being an agent of 'American imperialism', he is chained and imprisoned. His captor, Douch - later responsible for tens of thousands of deaths - interrogates him at length; after three months of torturous deliberation, during which his every word was weighed and his life hung in the balance, he was released. Four years later, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. Fran-ois Bizot became the official intermediary between the ruthless conqueror and the terrified refugees behind the gate of the French embassy: a ringside seat to one of history's most appalling genocides. Written thirty years later, Fran-ois Bizot's memoir of his horrific experiences in the 'killing fields' of Cambodia is, in the words of John le Carr-, a 'contemporary classic'.

Francois Bizot

A brave   attempt at clarity; that it poses more questions than it answers is a measure   of how unanswerable and disturbing these questions remain.

A  powerful philosophical meditation on the nature of humanity – and inhumanity – and personal responsibility, and an empathetic attempt to bring Duch the man out from behind Duch the monster.

Facing the Torturer is Bizot's attempt to reconcile the monster of popular imagination with the man who set him free.

This   beautifully written book will certainly get you thinking and makes for an   uncomfortable read about the human psyche.

An unparalleled investigation into the nature of humanity itself... Facing the Torturer is a deeply moving book not only about Cambodia but the nature of evil. What takes place inside the mind of a torturer, and what in the end drives him to become deeply religious and confess all of his past sins? Haunted by his own guilt decades later, Bizot is still searching for those answers.

Remarkable insights into the lives of evil men.

Inside the mind of a war criminal

In 1971, Francois Bizot was kept prisoner for three months in the Cambodian jungle, accused of being a CIA spy. His Khmer Rouge captor, Comrade Duch, eventually had him freed and it took Bizot decades to realize he owed his life to a man who, later in the Killing Fields regime, was to become one of Pol Pot's most infamous henchmen. As the head of the Tuol Sleng S-21 jail, Duch personally oversaw the detention, systematic torture and execution of more than 16,000 detainees. 
 
Duch's trial as a war criminal ended in July 2010 amid a blaze of publicity. He was sentenced to a controversial 35 years imprisonment. In the tradition of Gitta Sereny, who sat with Speer in the Nuremberg trials, Bizot attended Duch's court case and spent time with him in prison, trying to unearth whatever humanity Duch had left. 
 
'It would be all too easy,' says Bizot, 'if this man was a monster, not a member of the human race. We could use the slogan 'never again' and move on. But the deep horror is that this man is normal...Through his very qualities he became a mass murderer. Does that exonerate him from the crimes? Certainly not. But it does force us to question ourselves in a way that is deeply unsettling.' 
 
At once a personal essay, a historical and philosophical meditation, and an eye-witness account, Facing the Torturer will join a very short list of important books about man's personal responsibility in collective crimes.

Francois Bizot

Praise for Facing the Torturer

A brave attempt at clarity; that it poses more questions than it answers is a measure of how unanswerable and disturbing these questions remain.

A hard and admirable book.

A difficult but essential read.

A brave attempt at clarity; that it poses more questions than it answers is a measure of how unanswerable and disturbing these questions remain.

A hard and admirable book.

A difficult but essential read.

A brave attempt at clarity; that it poses more questions than it answers is a measure of how unanswerable and disturbing these questions remain.

A hard and admirable book.

A difficult but essential read.

Books by Francois Bizot

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