Three Flames: A Novel

“Lightman’s best book since Einstein’s Dreams . . . a piercing story of social dissolution in damaged Cambodia . . . an important story of global women’s rights.” —Annie Proulx

The stories of one Cambodian family are intricately braided together in Alan Lightman’s first work of fiction in seven years.

Three Flames portrays the struggles of a Cambodian farming family against the extreme patriarchal attitudes of their society and a cruel and dictatorial father, set in a rural community that is ...