Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields

Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields
Author: Kim DePaul
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1999-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300078732

Publisher Fact Sheet This extraordinary collection of eyewitness accounts by Cambodian survivors of Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s offers searing testimony to an era of brutality, brainwashing, betrayals, starvation, & gruesome executions.

Survivor

Survivor
Author: Chum Mey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 108
Release: 2012
Genre: Cambodia
ISBN: 9789995060244

In The Shadow Of The Banyan

In The Shadow Of The Banyan
Author: Vaddey Ratner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1849837619

A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday

To the End of Hell

To the End of Hell
Author: Denise Affonço
Publisher: Reportage Press
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2007
Genre: Cambodia
ISBN: 0955572959

"In one of the most powerful memoirs of persecution ever written, Denise Affonco recounts how her comfortable life in Phnom Penh was torn apart when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia in April 1975. As a French citizen, Denise Affonco was offered a choice: she could either flee to France with her children or they could all stay together in Cambodia with her husband, Seng, who did not have a French passport. Seng was Chinese and a convinced communist; he believed that the Khmer Rouge would bring an end to five years of civil war. Denise decided the family should stay together. But the Khmer Rouge did not bring peace: Denise and her family, along with millions of their fellow citizens, were deported to a living hell in the countryside where, for almost four years, they endured hard labour, famine, sickness and death." "What gives this book its freshness is that much of it was written in the months after Denise Affonco's liberation in 1979. Shortly afterwards, Denise left for France to rebuild her life with her surviving son and the carbon copy manuscript was all but forgotten. It was only when, some 25 years later, she met a European academic who told her that the Khmer Rouge did "nothing but good" for Cambodia that she realised it was time to end her silence."--BOOK JACKET.

The Elimination

The Elimination
Author: Rithy Panh
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2013-02-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1590515595

From the internationally acclaimed director of S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, a survivor’s autobiography that confronts the evils of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship. Rithy Panh was only thirteen years old when the Khmer Rouge expelled his family from Phnom Penh in 1975. In the months and years that followed, his entire family was executed, starved, or worked to death. Thirty years later, after having become a respected filmmaker, Rithy Panh decides to question one of the men principally responsible for the genocide, Comrade Duch, who’s neither an ordinary person nor a demon—he’s an educated organizer, a slaughterer who talks, forgets, lies, explains, and works on his legacy. This confrontation unfolds into an exceptional narrative of human history and an examination of the nature of evil. The Elimination stands among the essential works that document the immense tragedies of the twentieth century, with Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man and Elie Wiesel’s Night.

The Killing Fields of Cambodia

The Killing Fields of Cambodia
Author: Sokphal Din
Publisher:
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2020-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9789493056732

'The Killing Fields of Cambodia' is a tale of survival through generosity, resourcefulness, and the strength of family. Harrowing, yet always hopeful, Sokphal's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

Survival in the Killing Fields

Survival in the Killing Fields
Author: Haing Ngor
Publisher: Robinson
Total Pages: 573
Release: 2012-10-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1472103882

Best known for his academy award-winning role as Dith Pran in "The Killing Fields", for Haing Ngor his greatest performance was not in Hollywood but in the rice paddies and labour camps of war-torn Cambodia. Here, in his memoir of life under the Khmer Rouge, is a searing account of a country's descent into hell. His was a world of war slaves and execution squads, of senseless brutality and mind-numbing torture; where families ceased to be and only a very special love could soar above the squalor, starvation and disease. An eyewitness account of the real killing fields by an extraordinary survivor, this book is a reminder of the horrors of war - and a testament to the enduring human spirit.

A Nail the Evening Hangs On

A Nail the Evening Hangs On
Author: Monica Sok
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 63
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619322161

In her debut collection, Monica Sok uses poetry to reshape a family’s memory about the Khmer Rouge regime—memory that is both real and imagined—according to a child of refugees. Driven by myth-making and fables, the poems examine the inheritance of the genocide and the profound struggles of searing grief and PTSD. Though the landscape of Cambodia is always present, it is the liminal space, the in-betweenness of diaspora, in which younger generations must reconcile their history and create new rituals. A Nail the Evening Hangs On seeks to reclaim the Cambodian narrative with tenderness and an imagination that moves towards wholeness and possibility.

Invisible

Invisible
Author: Frances T. Pilch
Publisher: Robert Reed Publishers
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2017-07-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781944297244

"The challenge was not just to survive, but to survive without losing our humanity." Mac and Simone Leng The Cambodian Genocide claimed the lives of an estimated two million people - more than one-fourth of the total Cambodian population. Under the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, cities were evacuated and the population dispersed and forced into labor camps, where scores died of starvation, malnutrition, and disease. Pol Pot targeted for extermination certain minorities, the educated, and all those who had any connection with the former regime. Cambodia was to return to the "Year Zero," a pre-history - where no hint of Western influence would exist. Because Mac Leng was a former school principal and an army intelligence officer under the Lon Nol regime, he had a double target on his back. Mac and Simone Leng survived almost unendurable conditions for three years, eight months, and twenty days. This is their heartrending story of resilience, courage, and the power of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable terror. INVISIBLE: Surviving the Cambodian Genocide is a Cambodian couple's moving, personal, and straightforward story of living through one of the major disasters of the twentieth century. Millions of the Cambodian survivors of the 1975-1979 genocide have their own heart-rending accounts of what happened to them, packed like this book with dramatic, tragic events, individually experienced but in many respects similar because of the nature, ambition, and power of the Pol Pot regime. Surprisingly few of their accounts have appeared in English. This is a valuable addition to what we know. Ben Kiernan, author of How Pol Pot Came to Power and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies, Founding Director of the Genocide Studies Program (1994-2015), Yale UniversityA family swept up in the Cambodian genocide describes their experiences in a matter-of-fact tone that only heightens the sense of horror. An indispensable tale of human depravity and human endurance. Ambassador Roger N. Harrison, Former U.S. Ambassador to Jordan THE IMPORTANCE OF INVISIBLE INVISIBLE is a powerful story of survival against overwhelming odds during the nightmare years of the Cambodian Genocide. Very few first-person accounts of survival of the Cambodian Genocide exist, as most educated Cambodians were exterminated. The story of the survivors is framed in an account of the context of the Cambodian Genocide - how the murderous regime of Pol Pot came to power. Horrifying details of actual conditions during the Genocide are presented. Simultaneously, the book presents an uplifting message of the importance of humanity during even the most perilous of times. Love for family is a strong theme. The book fills a gap in the literature on the Cambodian Genocide, which is not well understood by most. The book is appropriate as required reading in any university course on genocide and human rights or in high school curricula. The book is suspenseful as the reader follows the journey of the Leng family from the killing fields to freedom. (Mac Leng worked on the film, The Killing Fields, as a consultant after he moved to the United States.) The book has implicit commentary on the important role of immigrants in the United States and the follies of U.S. foreign policy during the Viet Nam War era.

Pol Pot

Pol Pot
Author: Philip Short
Publisher: John Murray
Total Pages: 726
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1444780301

Pol Pot was an idealistic, reclusive figure with great charisma and personal charm. He initiated a revolution whose radical egalitarianism exceeded any other in history. But in the process, Cambodia desended into madness and his name became a byword for oppression. In the three-and-a-half years of his rule, more than a million people, a fifth of Cambodia's population, were executed or died from hunger and disease. A supposedly gentle, carefree land of slumbering temples and smiling peasants became a concentration camp of the mind, a slave state in which absolute obedience was enforced on the 'killing fields'. Why did it happen? How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares? Philip Short, the biographer of Mao, has spent four years travelling the length of Cambodia, interviewing surviving leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement and sifting through previously closed archives. Here, the former Khmer Rouge Head of State, Pol's brother-in-law and scores of lesser figures speak for the first time at length about their beliefs and motives.