This cover image released by Ecco shows “Afterparties” by Anthony Veasna So.
“Afterparties,” by Anthony Veasna So (Ecco)
In 1975, the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, establishing a regime whose fanatical policies led to the death of more than a quarter of the country’s population. That genocide is a recurring theme in Anthony Veasna So’s dazzling new story collection “Afterparties.”
So, who died of a drug overdose last December at age 28, was the son of Cambodian refugees. He grew up in California’s Central Valley, majored in art and literature at Stanford, and earned an MFA in fiction from the prestigious writing program at Syracuse.
When he died, he was on the verge of literary stardom, having secured a six-figure, two-book deal from Ecco. The first one, “Afterparties,” is an astonishing debut, crackling with energy, narrated in slangy vernacular, and written with attitude and style. The second book, a combination of fiction and nonfiction, is due out in 2023.
“As a kid, I heard traumatic stories of my family’s experience surviving… Pol Pot’s regime that somehow always landed on a joke,” he wrote in 2018, the year his rollicking short story “Superking Son Scores Again” appeared in the literary magazine n+1. Narrated in the first-person plural by “the young men of this Cambo hood,” it is about a grocery store owner who moonlights as a high school coach — “a regular Magic Johnson of badminton” — but can’t focus on the team because he is in trouble with loan sharks.
