| Ly Theam Teng | |
| Native Name: | លី ធាមតេង |
| Native Name Lang: | km |
| Birth Date: | 15 May 1930 |
| Birth Place: | Kampong Siem, Kampong Cham, French Indochina |
| Death Place: | Democratic Kampuchea |
| Occupation: | Writer, intellectual |
| Organization: | Khmer Writers Association |
| Notable Works: | Outline of the Development of Khmer literature (1972) |
| Spouse: | Ly Thirak |
| Children: | 5 |
Ly Theam Teng (;) was a Sino-Khmer literatus who authored many books including novels which have become classics of Cambodian literature, before he died of exhaustion under the Khmer Rouge in 1978.
Ly Theam Teng was born of Khmer-Chinese parents on May 15, 1930 in Kampong Siem District, of Kampong Cham Province. His father was named Ly Mong (李猛) and his mother was named Sok Kim (宋金). He married Ly Thirak, whose maiden name was Eam Kim Houy (穗金惠) and together they had 5 sons and daughters.
In the 1940s, while he was carrying his research at the Buddhist Institute, Éveline Porée-Maspéro called him to be a member of the Commission for the Study of the Cambodian Customs and Practises.
He later founded the Khmer Writers Association establishing an agreement to send their bi-monthly publication, Ecrivains Khmers ("Khmer Writers") to the Library of Congress.[1] He was one of the first contributors to the Kambuja suriyā, the first peer-reviewed Khmer journal of literary criticism.[2]
In 1958, he travelled to Soviet Union to attend the Afro-Asian Writers' Conference in Tashkent, which was an offshoot the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization in line with the non-aligned vision developed at the Bandung conference and which Prince Sihanouk supported.[3] It was an opportunity for this Khmer intellectual to mesh with other Asian intellectuals such as Yash Pal from India or Mao Dun from China, as well as Black American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois who was among those who gave impactful speeches.[4]
In June 1962, he was invited by the China Writers Association to travel to China where he was received with honours by Chinese officials such as Wan Li and writers such as Yang Shuo.[5] In 1966, Ly Theam Teng published a biography of Krom Ngoy with information from Ngoy's descendants who had maintained his poetic tradition.[6]
In 1972, he wrote what appears to be the first comprehensive history of Cambodian literature in both French and English which he entitled Outline of the Development of Khmer literature.[7] His work was instrumental in defining a new canon of Cambodian literature.[8]
Ly Theam Teng with his ethnic background is representative of the long tradition of Chinese influence on Cambodian literature as identified by Cambodian scholar Khing Hoc Dy. As many of his generations, they were well read in Chinese, Vietnamese and even French literature though the connections of French Indochina: "what is important is that this Sino-Vietnamese literature made them painfully conscious of the lack of a similar output in the Cambodian language."[9]