Prime Minister in 1945, and again in 1972: on paper, Son Ngoc Thanh's career looks like a political summit. In practice, he never held power for more than a few weeks at a stretch, caught between his open admiration for imperial Japan, a later alliance with the CIA, and a lifelong, structuring hostility toward Norodom Sihanouk. A portrait of a Khmer nationalist as consequential as he is uncomfortable to celebrate without nuance.