THE Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith was originally published as a story in The New Yorker. A penetrating account of the difficult life of a quasi-legal maid, Smith’s tale is longer than a short story but shorter than a novella. Smith leaves out many details from the story and chooses not to expand on characters and dialogues, leaving them to the imagination of the reader instead.

Fatou works as a live-in maid and nanny for a wealthy Asian family, the Derawals, in Willesden, North West London (signature Smith territory), trying to live an effaced life. She loves swimming and every Monday manages to steal guest passes from the Derawals to enjoy a few precious hours of freedom at a local club. On her way to the club, she keenly observes the inexorable movement of “Pock, smash. Pock, smash” — a game of badminton being played in the Embassy of Cambodia, located on the same road as the Derawals’ house.

On Sunday mornings she visits The Sacred Heart of Jesus church with her Nigerian friend, Andrew, with whom she talks about issues other than her life as an unpaid maid whose passport has been confiscated by her employers. Her sufferings enable her to empathise with people who are in conditions far worse. Thus, she consoles herself with the idea that “no, on balance she did not think she was a slave.”

Fatou’s interactions with Andrew serve to elevate her from an unpaid house maid into an independent woman. However, she is not sure if she wants Andrew for her husband: “some part of her rebelled against him, some unholy part.” Their relationship is not elaborately discussed and no reasons are given for why Fatou finds it difficult to love him. But that is part of the charm of Smith’s characterisation; her protagonist believes in self-sufficiency and thus finds it hard to let go of her inhibitions.

Smith was celebrated for her narrative technique with her debut novel, White Teeth, but since then some readers have had a love-hate relationship with her unique style. The form-content argument often comes up in discussions about her work. The Autograph Man, her second novel, is probably her darkest and also least popular work. With On Beauty, a Forsterian family drama, Smith wrote a highly enjoyable experimental novel that went on to not only win The Orange Prize for Fiction but also get shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

With her last novel, NW, we see a conscious manipulation of the form to impart a distinct texture to her style which results in a story that is disjointed and loosely connected at best. It has been a delightful experience to see how a writer like Smith, who won great fame very early into her career, keeps striving harder to prove her mettle again and again.

Divided into 21 chapters, The Embassy of Cambodia is essentially a novel in the guise of a story. Smith’s succinct, powerful prose shines through every short paragraph in the book. The Joycean fragmentation of NW is replaced by Forsterian impeccable prose reminiscent of On Beauty. The narrative seamlessly shifts between the past and the present, revealing Fatou’s past hardships and jobs in Nigeria and her present life. Fatou, we find out, believes in a resilient way of life that has no room for slacking, just like in a game of badminton. “The key to surviving as a people, in Fatou’s opinion, was to make your own arrangements,” we are told. The game of badminton — with its intermittent “Pock, smash. Pock, smash” — pulsates at the background of the story, indicating that Fatou’s life, like the game, has its own synergy and a constant struggle between a plunge forward and a thrust back. Her swimming, too, is “not very elegant, not especially fast, but consistent and determined.”

Smith’s unique verbal organisation and style are evident from the very beginning. If we look at the ideological significance of the story we’ll find issues as diverse as power and inequality, religion and the limits of human empathy, death and genocide, human suffering and alienation. The Embassy of Cambodia, in the background of the story, serves as a resplendent yet very concrete reminder of the unknown sufferings of human beings. When one day Fatou accidentally saves the life of a Derawal child, the dynamics of the power relationship between the maid and the employers goes askew. But whether it’s good for Fatou in the grander scheme of things is left to the imagination of the readers. The readers, just like the plural first person narrator ‘we’, remain on the peripheries of Fatou’s life.

Those who gave up on Smith’s writing after White Teeth would be pleased with what this compact yet beautiful story has to offer. Smith is a unique writer and here she has given us a piece of fiction that is very unusual, not fitting the established norms of either larger or shorter fiction.

The Embassy of Cambodia

By Zadie Smith

Hamish Hamilton, London

ISBN 978-0241146526

80pp.