Customer Reviews

Angkor the Magnificent - The Wonder City of Ancient Cambodia

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Once again, Kent Davis has been able to convey his love and respect for the history of Cambodia through this beautifully written book. Angkor the Magnificent makes one feel as if you are in Cambodia riding an elephant during the 1920's. I have been magically transported into this exotic beautiful world.

Mr. Davis surprises readers with a biography of Mrs. Helen Churchill Candee. What a fascinating life she must have had as a liberated woman in the early 20th Century. From surviving the Titanic disaster to exotic and primitive travel, Mrs. Candee is an inspiration to 21st Century women.

Angkor the Magnificent is of equal quality to the other Cambodian books published by Mr. Davis: Cambodian Dancers and Earth in Flower.

If you are interested in Asian history, this book is a must read!

Angkor is, indubitably, one of the most magical places on earth and it has captured the imagination of many a photographer, poet and writer. Candee's travelogue vividly portrays an Angkor of yesteryear, an enjoyable read for those looking for historical color and insights into the truly magnificent ruins of Angkor, Cambodia. A true pioneer, Candee writes well and one is inspired by her life and thankful that she recorded her travels in the early part of the last century.
A great read! Highly recommended.

I've been to Angkor several times over the past 15 years. I read this book last summer and it was a whole new way of looking at the experience. A real expedition. The language and writing of the time is charming and I was transported by it. You get a feel for the attitudes and perspectives of that era. Very enjoyable... plus additional bonuses like background info on the author and her account of surviving the Titanic disaster.

A truly charming book, this one. There were times, in fact, when I wondered if the name Helen Churchill Candee was a pseudonym for Jane Austen. Candee writes about Angkor with a Nineteenth Century English novelist's grasp of language, faith and the human condition.

Angkor Wat on first view? "Sitting in majesty across a flooded space, it claimed us. It held out spirit arms and embraced us...The tower of Babel, built to touch heaven's high dome, carried man no nearer God's throne than do the uplifting towers of Angkor Vat."

The apsaras? "I am made shy in their presence, while they remain unperturbed. They are so many to know all at once, and their character to me is unfathomable. Coming into the court where they abound is like being shown into a room full of living strangers...They have the ease of those to whom self-consciousness is unknown, the air of the rich aristocrat."

Candee came calling in the early 1920s, traveling by river steamer up from Saigon. She stayed at a hotel just outside Angkor Wat's west gate. That era, that hotel, are gone but some things haven't changed--she rode an elephant up Phnom Bakheng and attended a night-time performance of classical dance.

There are places where her level of detail will tempt some readers to skim. And some of what Candee states as fact--that the Bayon is the oldest temple in Angkor Thom, for instance--was accepted in her day but has now been rethought. But overall the book leaves us with the impression of a woman determined to get things right, who is as respectful of the people and the ways she encounters as any of the foreigners who've fallen under Angkor's thrall in more recent times.

The modern edition comes with an appendix biography of its American author, a remarkable woman for a lot of reasons, who didn't let a night bobbing around in a Titanic lifeboat scare her off from future world travel. Her own account of surviving the sinking is also included.

When Helen Candee survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 she didn't know that she had an even greater adventure ahead of her in Asia!

Ten years later she traveled to the Far East as a single woman, first stopping in Hong Kong and Annam and then exploring the exotic and mysterious jungle capital of the ancient Khmers - the place the Chinese called the fabled "Land of Gold" known as Angkor.

Candee's passion for adventure spills off the pages with intuitive wit and charm. This woman has a sense of humor (!) as well as a sharp eye for details of classic Cambodia. Her beautiful prose and brilliant descriptions left me with a desire to explore Angkor Wat for myself one day.

This book also includes a biography of Helen's life - she worked in the Red Cross in WWI, she fought for women's rights, she was an interior designer with several books, she raised a family on her own. There are many photos (more than 100) that put faces and places near the descriptions.

The end the book has Candee's first person account of the Titanic sinking. Imagine being on that ship when it struck the iceberg, fleeing to an overcrowded lifeboat, and then watching fellow passengers die as the ship sank into the sea. Now tell me if you would get back on another boat? Well, author Helen Candee did and continued her world travels, all recorded in riveting style that makes you feel like you're right there.

A great adventure travel book for women...or even brave men!

This book, through Candee, provides a historical reference for Cambodia's Angkor Wat that undoubtedly rivals today's experience. Even though the same awe inspiring sights exist at Angkor Wat today, we can't help but realize that the experiences Candee talks about in Angkor the Magnificent are somehow different. This historical context paired with her unique biography make for an interesting and exciting read. Strongly recommend.

For most people, Angkor is about their own encounters with the stones as much as it is about the stones themselves. The personal experience colors the objective assessment ... and so it should. In 1981 I had the privilege, of being part of the second western journalistic team to visit Angkor after the Pol Pot years -- I was writing for Smithsonian magazine; and National Geographic, I am sorry to say, beat us by a week. There were Vietnamese military officers staying at the Grand Hotel in Siem Reap then, drinking too much cognac. They assumed I was Russian and proposed toasts, in slurred French, to Soviet-Vietnamese friendship. That night mortar shells landed outside the hotel ... but nothing about that alcohol-and-explosive-fuelled night impressed me as much as seeing Angkor the next day. To clamber around on the faces of the Bayon, to feel the weight of the stones pressing down on each other, to be lost in the orchestral chorus of jungle insects and gibbons was to be brought into some realm that was both eternal and unforgettable.
Angkor the Magnificent is about the encounters Helen Churchill Candee had early in the 20th century. Others came to Angkor before and now, of course, with jet planes landing at Siem Reap, the volume of visitors is larger than ever before in history. This is a charming book. It stands up well to the passing of decades, and I for one am grateful that the remarkable Kent Davis has brought it back into print.
Roger Warner, author of Angkor: The Hidden Glories; Surviving the Killing Fields; and other books about Cambodia and Laos.