Matthew Campbell, "The Man Who Stole the Gods: A True Story of War, Obsession, and a Global Art Conspiracy" (Penguin, 2026)

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**Nicholas Gordon** (1:07)
Hello, I'm Nicholas Gordon, host of the Asian Review of Books podcast done in partnership with the New Books Network. In this podcast, we interview fiction and non-fiction authors working in, around, and about the Asia Pacific region. On June 10th, the Metropolitan Museum of New York returned two pieces of artwork to Cambodia, an encore statue and a sandstone lintel. It was the latest repatriation attempt by the U.S.'s premier art museum, and it's the third time the Met has had to give up Cambodian artifacts specifically. Matthew Campbell's, The Man Who Stole the Gods, dives into the story of the Cambodian antiquities trade from looted temples in the Cambodian forests through dealers in Bangkok, like Douglas Latchford, and into museums and billionaire homes in the West. He also digs into how this trade fell apart, how the US. Department of Justice and activists in Cambodia pressured dealers in museums like the Met to give this art back. Matthew is an award-winning reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His previous book, Dead in the Water, co-authored with Kit Chellel, was elected as a Book of the Year by The Economist, Financial Times and The Times. Mass reported more than 25 countries on crime, corruption, terrorism, economics, and the environment. His work is on some of journalism's highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, the National Press Club, SOPA, and Sabew for both feature and investigative reporting.
So Matthew, thank you for coming on the show today to talk about your book, The Man Who Stole the Gods.
I do want to ask before we kind of dive into all the, what was going on in Cambodia and Thailand and the US and everything, how did you catch on to this story in the first place? What did you see or what did you hear that kind of put this story on your radar?

**Matthew Campbell** (2:41)
So I came to this the same way I've come to a lot of stories, which is I just saw a headline float by and thought there must be an interesting story there. The headline in this case was in 2019, when I read that this British art dealer had been indicted in the US on federal fraud and conspiracy charges relating to the sale of ancient artifacts from Cambodia. I thought, well, that's interesting. When I found out that a lot of the artifacts in question have gone to places like the Metropolitan Museum, I thought, well, that's even more interesting. Then when I found out that the British art dealer in question, Douglas Latchford, was among other things, the principal financial sponsor of bodybuilding in Southeast Asia, I thought, well, that's very, very interesting.
From there, I started digging into it. COVID intervened, which made it impossible to do this book in that time frame, so I did a different book. But when things reopened again in 2022, I went back at it and started learning more about what turned out to be a pretty incredible absorbing story.

**Nicholas Gordon** (3:56)
So let's talk about the society where these artifacts and this artwork came from, it's the Khmer Empire in Cambodia. What exactly was the society and why did they make all of these temples and all of this artwork?

**Matthew Campbell** (4:10)
Many people listening will have been to Encore or certainly have seen pictures of Encore, and that's basically a pretty good introduction. So the Khmer Empire were the polity that ruled Cambodia, much of what is now Thailand and Vietnam, from about the 9th century until the 15th century. They were one of the great powers of the ancient world. So you could compare in scale to what they achieved to the Maya or the Aztecs, among these other great civilizations.