A Conversation with Kim Fay Random House Reader''s Circle: The Map of Lost Memories takes place in Shanghai, Saigon, and Cambodia. What inspired you to set a novel in these exotic places? Kim Fay: When I was a child, my grandpa would tell my sister and me stories about his life as a sailor in Asia in the early 1930s. He loved that part of the world, and we would pore over his photos from that time, most of which were of Shanghai and captured images of rickshaws and sampans against a backdrop of imposing European buildings. As I grew up, my fascination with Asia simmered until I graduated from college and made my first trip. I was instantly smitten by the magical combination of foreignness and familiarity from the stories on which I had been raised, and I continued to travel to the region until, in 1995, I moved to Vietnam to teach English. I had no idea how at home I would feel in this country. I ended up living there for four years, and I have spent the past eighteen years writing about it in articles, guidebooks, and a food memoir. As a fiction writer, it felt natural for me to set a novel in the region.

RHRC: Why did you choose to set your novel in 1925? What was it about this time period that suited the story you wanted to tell? KF: Again, my grandpa can take partial credit, since that was the era when he was traveling in Asia. But beyond this personal note, The Map of Lost Memories needed a time in which there were not black-and-white attitudes about the morality of trafficking and owning art. This era, the 1920s, began forming in the late nineteenth century, when the advent of mass tourism and the lack of laws protecting cultural relics meant that average travelers could simply purchase rare artifacts and take them home as souvenirs. At this same time, the birth of art dealing as a profession was fueled by robber barons and industrialists who pursued collecting with the same determination that they pursued their business interests. In addition, colonialism (and its hubris) was at its heyday in Asia, China''s fledgling Communist party was experiencing a pivotal moment with the death of Sun Yat-sen, and just to travel in a foreign land was an adventure in and of itself. The novel also takes place in a kind of golden era, between the atrocities of WWI and WWII and before the Great Depression and the Communist takeover of China, an era when many people felt an unprecedented freedom that was reflected in their actions. Given all of these elements, I can''t imagine an- other time period in which The Map of Lost Memories could take place. RHRC: Your novel incorporates China''s revolutionary politics, the vagaries of colonialism, and ancient Cambodian history.

How much of the book is based on fact? KF: One of my main goals with the novel was to make it as historically accurate as possible, especially in regard to Khmer history. While I knew a bit about the Khmer temples when I moved to Vietnam, most notably Angkor Wat, my real interest in them came when a friend gave me Silk Roads by Axel Madsen, a nonfiction book about André and Clara Malraux. In 1923, this young French couple lost their small fortune, and in what can only be called a moment of sheer audacity, decided to loot a Cambodian temple and live off the sale of a few choice artifacts. The Malrauxs set sail from France to Cambodia, and with the help of a fellow adventurer and local laborers, they managed to pry a seven-piece, 1,000-pound bas relief from the abandoned temple of Banteay Srei. They were caught almost immediately and put under house arrest in the capital city of Phnom Penh. While awaiting trial, they had the freedom to roam the city. During this time, they witnessed the injustices of colonialism, and this experience changed their lives, launching their involvement in the revolutionary politics of the region. The deeper I dug, the more fascinating these two became.

I read Clara''s memoirs and André''s The Royal Way, a novel about an expedition to find a hidden temple in Cambodia. In the end, the Malrauxs inspired my characters Roger and Simone Merlin, and their experience sparked The Map of Lost Memories, as well as my own interest in Cambodian history. As a novelist, I wanted to weave this history into a story in a way that didn''t feel like a dry academic lesson. This resulted in the lost temple and scrolls. While these are fictitious, the premise they support is not. In 1925 little was known about the rise and fall of the ancient Khmer civilization. Even now there are conflicting theories and missing puzzle pieces. But back then, the day- to-day history and fate of the Khmer were genuine mysteries, making it the perfect subject for a novel.

RHRC: Did you use any particular methods for organizing or planning this novel? Did you end up having a favorite (or least favorite) part of the writing process? And were you ever surprised by where the narrative took you while writing? KF: I love plot, and because of this, plot is always what comes to me first. With The Map of Lost Memories, the minute I realized I wanted to write about the looting of a Cambodian temple, a plot appeared, fully formed. I say a plot and not the plot because although stories come to me whole, the story I start with is rarely the story I finish with. I wrote a first draft of this novel in less than a year. Then the real work began as I wrote another draft and another . and then another and another! While some writers might consider this the revision process, for me it is more of a layering process. I craft one layer over the next, writing myself closer with each layer to the story I want to tell. I love this process because it allows my characters to grow and evolve in organic ways, and I get to spend this time getting to know them better and understanding them in the context of the story, which also becomes richer each new time I work with it.

This said, my least favorite part--or more accurately, the hardest part for me--is character development. Characters are my weakness. Often, when I start writing, I have no idea who my characters are, and I sometimes find myself forcing them to go against their natures in order to serve the plot I''ve created. This is always a mistake. Fortunately, characters usually have minds of their own, and if you give them enough space, they will develop in incredible ways. As for surprises, I was definitely surprised when Simone and Irene killed Roger, because he was supposed to chase them all the way to Cambo- dia. I was also surprised when Mr. Simms decided to show up in Cambodia.

But the most intriguing surprise was Clothilde. She did not exist in early drafts of the book, and when she first appeared, she was simply Mr. Simms''s nurse. But the more I wrote, the more she demanded a life and story of her own. I think she was protesting the lack of local characters in the book. I don''t blame her, but I was wary of including a local cast, because I felt I had to stay true to the Western view of Asia in the 1920s, and that viewpoint was so awful most of the time. Even Irene, who loves Cambodia and its culture, has a pretty terrible attitude toward the local population. Also, when it came to local women and their role in Western expatriate society at that time, they were generally confined to being servants, mistresses, or prostitutes.

While Clothilde is indeed Mr. Simms''s mistress, I hope that her reasons for this are sympathetic and that her individuality comes through. I wish I would have developed her further, but she has recently informed me that I am not done with her and she will appear in a future novel. RHRC: A historical novel obviously requires a great deal of research. Is this something you enjoy doing? How did you go about researching The Map of Lost Memories ? And was there anything about the process that caused difficulties for you along the way? KF: For as many of the scenes in my book as was possible, I visited the setting--every place from a hotel café in Saigon to a remote wooded path along the Mekong River. I am fortunate to have lived in the region where the novel takes place and to be able to travel back frequently. My four years in Vietnam gave me a strong sense of the book''s physical setting, especially since Saigon still contained many notable remnants of the French colonial world that once inhabited it when I lived there. I could walk the city''s streets, as well as those of Shanghai and Phnom Penh, and imagine myself in an earlier time period.

This isn''t as easy to do today, since all three cities have been greatly modernized over the past two decades. I also spent time at Angkor Wat and the surrounding Khmer temples, which have remained essentially unchanged over time. It was a privilege to be able to write scenes set at the temples while actually being at the temples. Along with personal experience, I relied heavily on the Los Angeles Public Library and the Internet. When I started the book in 1995, only the former existed . and I''m glad. While I enjoy trolling the Internet, I ap- preciate the limitations, so to speak, of access only to books. Without the endless distractions of the Web, I was free to lose myself in obscure travelogues from the 1920s, which offered insight into the attitudes of travelers during that era.

And books such as Pillaging Cambodia: The Illicit Traffic in Khmer Art; Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Theft; Loot! The Heritage of Plunder; and The Plundered Past: The Story of the Illegal International Traffic in Works of Art --combined with the Malrauxs'' accounts of their temple-robbing experience--gave me a certain level of comfor.