Clara and André Malraux conspired to loot the pink temple of Banteay Srei, but their failure started a battle of reclamation One morning in November 1923, a young French couple stopped by the headquarters of the École Française d’Extrême Orient (EFEO), the French School for the Far East, a stuccoed, ochre-painted villa shaded by frangipani and banyan trees in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. The pair had just arrived by boat and were soaking up the atmosphere of Southeast Asia.