Silk roads: the Asian adventures of Clara and André Malraux

by Axel Madsen

Andrà and Clara Malraux had the world at their feet. Wealthy and carefree, their life was a bohemian idyll spent frequenting the hottest clubs and restaurants, and traveling and mingling with the Paris literary set. But all this changed when the stock market crashed and their fortune disappeared overnight. Penniless but still craving adventure, Andrà dreamt up a plan to travel to French Indochina where they would collect temple treasures and sell them for a huge profit in America. Against all the oddsâ jungle fevers, inexperience, and uncooperative localsâ they succeeded. But their treasure hunt turned into a dangerous crusade when Clara and Andrà set up an anti-government newspaper in Saigon, defiantly exposing colonial injustices, corruption, and the governmentâ s stifling of Asian culture.

Genres: Biography, Asia, Travel, Nonfiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 17, 2015

About the author

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Madsen

Reviews

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Last week we were in Siem Reap, Cambodia, touring the amazing temples from a thousand years ago, not just Angkor Wat but dozens of stunning structures including the entrancing pink sandstone sculptures of Banteai Srey. Even today the images in stone appear to be in motion..infinitely graceful motion. The stone architecture and sculpture compare favorably with those of ancient Rome and Greece. Thousand year old reservoirs still hold water that entices locals to swim and go boating. But the settlements around them, rice paddies to support a million people, sophisticated hydraulics, intricate management systems, gorgeous art, subtle dance, and astonishing engineering techniques are gone forever, just the stones remain. We contemplated the fall of empires at a lovely restaurant called Cafe Malraux, after the French Minister of Culture who advised De Gaulle, Kennedy, and Nixon on Asia. I bought this book at Monuments Bookstore in Phnom Penh to find out about Malraux. Well, not a pretty story. At age 22 he lost his German wife's fortune, and in 1923, he tried to recoup by stealing beautiful sculptures of dancing angels from hidden Khmer temples in the jungle. It was all premeditated. In advance, Malraux found a New York gallery that would buy whatever stone carvings he could loot, and then he brought hacksaws and crowbars into the jungle. How could he??? Fortunately both the locals and the French authorities knew to stop him. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail...his wife rallied the French intelligentia and got him off the hook. But then she was puzzled when the husband she had rescued from prison went into journalism and published things that weren't true...he explained to her what he published would become true....Danish biographer Axel Madsen traces all the dispiriting details of this disgraceful story. He tells a good story, is pretty objective about Malraux's good and bad sides. But this is a popular history: unreliable footnotes, incomplete index, assertions with no sources, many blind references. It appears to have been written rather quickly.So read with caution. He did personally know Malraux, so there is an element of oral history in Madsen's recounting of the audacious theft. And in Cambodia, the story is still not over... In April 2014 several Cambodian statues that had been looted in the 1970s were finally returned to the National Museum of Phnom Penh. Wonderful to recover history from the barbarians...but who knew the French Minister of Culture was a barbarian? Important subject, sketchy treatment....still I'm glad I read it. I just think that Cafe Malraux should change its name to Cafe Bantaei Srey...

[Ryan]

This book has two parts, the first dealing with the couple's stealing of Khmer statuary and temple carvings and their subsequent arrest and trial, the second about their involvement with the publication of a local newspaper in Vietnam. I liked the adventure and description of travel and colonial Indochina in the first, but bailed out shortly after the start of the second part, finding the politicking and machinations of the large cast of characters not sufficiently interesting to stay the course. More adventure and less backstory of the couple would've worked better for me too, but as this is a biography of sorts, it is inescapable.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was inspired to read the account of Clara and Andre Malreaux after reading Julia Dahl's Invisible City, a fictional account that closely follows their adventures in Cambodia.

[Jim Firestone · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting telling of an obscure but fascinating part of the lives of Andre and Clara Malreux. Andre Malreux is a famous French 20th century author.

The young Malreux couple go to Cambodia on an ill conceived archeological adventure and get caught and detained for months by the French Colonial government. While there they become possessed by the oppression by the colonist throughout Asia and establish connections with local revolutionaries across the region.

Subsequently Andre create three widely successful stories about the struggles in Asia of the oppressors and the oppressed.

This is a rich portrayal of an earlier time in a region of great change and interest.

[Jane Wetzel · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing style just seemed to confuse me with times, places and people. I found that the main characters were not as interesting to me as I thought they might be when I found this book. The story and facts just seemed so disjointed. This story mainly centers in Saigon and other parts of Asia during some perilous times. Someone else might like it, just not me.

[Brendan Ryan]

A fun read, kind of read like trashy historical fiction but it's nonfiction, which I'm here for. Read this visiting Siem Reap where the couple famously attempted to loot a temple. I found myself more drawn to Clara and want to read her autobiographies now.

[Jmolentin]

Read it about 20 years ago, and loaned it to several people to read. What an interesting story. Those artist types are a greedy lot and know how to get themselves off the hook. Quite an education.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very Interesting Read.