Le kilomètre 83

An engineer assigned to a railway in Siam–Haut-Cambodge observes the small, improvised society that forms around the line and centers his memory on An-hoan, called Antoine, a once-celebrated stone carver reduced to menial work who is rescued, redeems his craft by carving painted milestone tablets, then dies after completing one marker, leaving the kilometre 83 stone intentionally or accidentally blank. The narrative moves between precise camp scenes—meals, colleagues like Fagui and Georges Lully, the shock of Lacroix’s death—and reflective passages about labor, artistry, memory, and the uneasy intersections of colonial enterprise and local lives.