Hak Chhay Hok
# Hak Chhay Hok

Hak Chhay Hok (Khmer: ហាក់ ឆៃហុក, 1944–1975) was a Cambodian writer. Born in the province of Battambang. He was one of the most prolific Cambodian writers of 1960s and the 1970s. He wrote fifty novels, collaborated with a number of journals, and occasionally worked for the cinema. His best-known works include O Fatal Smoke, Drifting with Karma, The Lightning of the Magic Sword, In the Shadow of Angkor, and Oh! Sorry, Dad!. A few months after the Fall of Phnom Penh, he published Little Manual for the Dissipation of Misery. He was disappeared by the Khmer Rouge.

The Cambodian writer Soth Polin said: “There will be another generation of writers. But right now, what we have lost is indescribable. Khun Srun, Hak Chhay Hok, Chou Thani, Kim Seth... They are gone... What we have lost is not reconstructable. An epoch is finished. So when we have literature again, it will be a new literature."

