Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry

$9.95

by Wojciech Tochman

July 12, 2022
nonfiction | pb | 150 pgs.
5.5" x 8.5"
978-1-948830-50-8
 

Equipped with the sensitivity known from his earlier reportages, in Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry, Wojciech Tochman addresses people with mental illnesses in Cambodia who are imprisoned in kennels, chained up, and locked in cells--often 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 Cry approaches both the doctors and their patients with empathy, and also highlights the country's other social problems, such as slave labor or the lack of sensitivity in society.

A thematic continuation of Polish journalist Tochman's self-described dark triptych about societies affected by genocides, Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry 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."

 

Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

 

About the Author:

Wojciech Tochman (b. 1969) is one of Poland’s best-known authors of literary non-fiction. His published works include Like Eating a Stone and Today We’ll Draw Death, which together with Roosters Crow, Dogs Cry form a triptych about everyday life following genocide in, respectively, Bosnia Herzegovina, Rwanda and Cambodia. His books have been translated into a large number of European languages. He has won numerous prizes including the Premio Kapuscinski awarded in Rome. For the past few years he has been living in Greece.

 

About the Translator:

Antonia Lloyd-Jones has translated works by many of Poland's leading contemporary novelists, including Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Jacek Dehnel, Mariusz Szczygieł, and Artur Domosławski. 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.