I am revealing my vintage, but stories of Indochinese refugees have been in my cinematic consciousness since the 1980s. What struck me about the Year of the Rabbit is why this book had taken off. I realized that after visiting cartoonist friends in Jakarta in 2000, just two years after the riots and the physical city was still recovering from the violence. It is to be in a constant state of stress but the human mind is an amazing thing - you adapt and you adjust. I have always wondered how people live their lives during wartime and in long periods of chaos and instability. He is not the ‘hero’ of the story as he was only a baby between 19, but this family story of running, hiding and the years of living dangerously had a big impact on him and his psyche. It is a harrowing story told with much of the actual violence taken place off panel (intentional of Tian). Tian was born three days after the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia in 1975 and this book detailed his family eventual escape to the Thai border in 1979. I proposed the panel and Tian’s name came up, so why not? Any gentle nudge to read a new book is good.Īnd I am glad I did as Year of the Rabbit is one of the best books I have read this year. Until I got to moderate a panel related to Southeast Asian comics for SWF 2021. I have heard good things about Tian Veasna’s Year of the Rabbit (Drawn & Quarterly, 2020) but never got the chance to explore it.

I tried to keep up but there are so many books out there that sometimes you just need that push to read that book that is under your radar. The thing I like about the Singapore Writers Festival is that it exposes me to new writers and new books.

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna