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Daughter of Cambodia #1
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers
From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung'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.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.
Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung'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.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2000
About the author
Loung Ung
8 books405 followersAn author, lecturer, and activist, Loung Ung has advocated for equality, human rights, and justice in her native land and worldwide for more than fifteen years. Ung lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her husband.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,052 reviews
June 28, 2008
There are some things left unlearned from history books. You can read about the Cambodian genocide from many other sources that will explain the facts and statistics in the traditional sterile style that historic texts usually take. You can actually witness the places and things that history has left behind. And then, you can dive into personal accounts of history; how humanity struggles to survive during some of its darkest hours.
While I am usually a sucker for auto/biographical works for the above reason, I have never been held so captive by a book in all my life. I've read many other survivor accounts from other historical periods, but this one disturbed me to no end; such a young child, such horrible atrocities being committed, witnessed, remembered. I could never imagine walking in her shoes at her age. Her story will haunt me forever.
I found that as the hours passed after I began the book, I could not go to sleep without finishing the story, without making sure this child would make it out alright. Of course we know she does survive, how else would the book be written, but I read on as if her life depended on reading the very last word. I finished it just as the sun started to rise and spent those first beautiful rays in complete thanksgiving: how lucky are we, who have lived so well, to be able to learn from those who have not had that chance.
While I am usually a sucker for auto/biographical works for the above reason, I have never been held so captive by a book in all my life. I've read many other survivor accounts from other historical periods, but this one disturbed me to no end; such a young child, such horrible atrocities being committed, witnessed, remembered. I could never imagine walking in her shoes at her age. Her story will haunt me forever.
I found that as the hours passed after I began the book, I could not go to sleep without finishing the story, without making sure this child would make it out alright. Of course we know she does survive, how else would the book be written, but I read on as if her life depended on reading the very last word. I finished it just as the sun started to rise and spent those first beautiful rays in complete thanksgiving: how lucky are we, who have lived so well, to be able to learn from those who have not had that chance.
September 20, 2017
On a recent trip to Cambodia I got to witness it's rich culture, lush landscapes and delicious, delicious food. At every turn I also saw the remnants of a painful past. I spent a hot afternoon walking through the Tuel Sleng Genocide Museum, having my breath taken away as I walked from room to room, each worse than the last. In one section of the former prison, I walked into a hastily made brick cell and felt so instantly claustrophobic I had to run out into the open air.The pictures, informational plaques and even the conversation, held via hand gestures, with a former prisoner couldn't help me grasp the genocide that occurred not that long ago.
Later I went to Choeng Ek, the most (in)famous of the killing fields. I walked up to, around and even in the commemorative stupa that had been built to honor the murdered and to hold their remains. Seeing children's skulls display evidence of so much violence with the cracks, dents and bullet holes broke my heart. Walking through the grounds and stepping on peoples' bones and clothing remnants that were making their way up through the dirt... Knowing that every year the rains would bring up more remains.... How do people make peace with that? How do they move on?
Loung Ung lived through the genocide and has carried on her life by teaching others about what happened, helping them to survive the atrocities that seems to keep happening around the world. In her memoir "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" she tells of the Cambodia genocide from the eyes of a child. This perspective that makes what happened all the more heart-wrenching but also makes the facts easier to understand. (I use that word loosely, because I can never understand why what happened did, but I want to, need to, understand the facts of what did happen.)
Genocide is such a big concept. The Cambodia genocide was so messy, political, based on a series of events that made it possible. A child's memory strips out all of the extraneous facts and delivers only what they know. In her memoir, she inserts the historical facts necessary to keep her story moving, but she inserts them as dialogue from her father delivered to her. History as would be explained to a small child doesn't include the political intricacies that make our world so confusing. For this, I was grateful to Ung. Her tale helped me establish some basic knowledge from which I can expand with future reading.
A quick read, "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" is the kind of book you start reading and don't want to put down. It's a great introduction to anyone interested in visiting Cambodia, learning about their history or learning about genocide in general.
Later I went to Choeng Ek, the most (in)famous of the killing fields. I walked up to, around and even in the commemorative stupa that had been built to honor the murdered and to hold their remains. Seeing children's skulls display evidence of so much violence with the cracks, dents and bullet holes broke my heart. Walking through the grounds and stepping on peoples' bones and clothing remnants that were making their way up through the dirt... Knowing that every year the rains would bring up more remains.... How do people make peace with that? How do they move on?
Loung Ung lived through the genocide and has carried on her life by teaching others about what happened, helping them to survive the atrocities that seems to keep happening around the world. In her memoir "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" she tells of the Cambodia genocide from the eyes of a child. This perspective that makes what happened all the more heart-wrenching but also makes the facts easier to understand. (I use that word loosely, because I can never understand why what happened did, but I want to, need to, understand the facts of what did happen.)
Genocide is such a big concept. The Cambodia genocide was so messy, political, based on a series of events that made it possible. A child's memory strips out all of the extraneous facts and delivers only what they know. In her memoir, she inserts the historical facts necessary to keep her story moving, but she inserts them as dialogue from her father delivered to her. History as would be explained to a small child doesn't include the political intricacies that make our world so confusing. For this, I was grateful to Ung. Her tale helped me establish some basic knowledge from which I can expand with future reading.
A quick read, "First They Killed My Father: A daughter of Cambodia remembers" is the kind of book you start reading and don't want to put down. It's a great introduction to anyone interested in visiting Cambodia, learning about their history or learning about genocide in general.
May 27, 2018
I read this memoir of Loung Ung on the heels of A Fine Balance, and I must say, now I need to read something light and joyful to regain a little balance of my own. Of course, we all knew, secondhand, what was happening in Cambodia in the 1970s. We heard horrifying tales of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s killing fields. But, hearing such news from a reporter, and hearing the account of a victim, are entirely different experiences.
I marvel at the resilience of people who endure such atrocities; I wonder at the cruel nature of those who follow such a man and commit such acts. Loung Ung’s account is all the more poignant because her four-year trial began at the age of five. An age when we do not let our children cross the street on their own. Watching soldiers march her father away to his death was not even the worst thing she witnessed. The hatred she so rightfully felt toward the Khmer Rouge and the soldiers of that regime must have been beyond imagination, and must easily have influenced every day of her life since. How horrible to have so much to want revenge for and no one to hold accountable or way to render any semblance of justice.
I couldn’t help chronicling my own life alongside hers. When she was being ripped from her life in Phnom Penh and put onto a road of starvation and hard labor, I was graduating college and agonizing over making a good career choice. When she was being delivered from the refugee camps in Thailand to a future in Vermont, I was getting married and embarking on a new life of my own. Between those two events, she endured the unimaginable and I failed to fully appreciate the golden blessings of my own good fortune.
It is important that we read these kinds of accounts. They enrich our understanding of our own position in the world and they remind us why it is important that we pay attention and care about what is happening beyond our own lives and our own borders.
I marvel at the resilience of people who endure such atrocities; I wonder at the cruel nature of those who follow such a man and commit such acts. Loung Ung’s account is all the more poignant because her four-year trial began at the age of five. An age when we do not let our children cross the street on their own. Watching soldiers march her father away to his death was not even the worst thing she witnessed. The hatred she so rightfully felt toward the Khmer Rouge and the soldiers of that regime must have been beyond imagination, and must easily have influenced every day of her life since. How horrible to have so much to want revenge for and no one to hold accountable or way to render any semblance of justice.
I couldn’t help chronicling my own life alongside hers. When she was being ripped from her life in Phnom Penh and put onto a road of starvation and hard labor, I was graduating college and agonizing over making a good career choice. When she was being delivered from the refugee camps in Thailand to a future in Vermont, I was getting married and embarking on a new life of my own. Between those two events, she endured the unimaginable and I failed to fully appreciate the golden blessings of my own good fortune.
It is important that we read these kinds of accounts. They enrich our understanding of our own position in the world and they remind us why it is important that we pay attention and care about what is happening beyond our own lives and our own borders.
September 25, 2017
FOR ALL THOSE WHOM GOT TORTURED, INSULTED, PERSECUTED, RAPED AND SLAUGHTERED BY COMMUNISM THROUGHOUT THE NIGHTMARISH YEARS IN LIVING HELL ON EARTH
You know nothing about Cambodia if you don't read this book
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4882376/
You know nothing about Cambodia if you don't read this book
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4882376/
September 1, 2017
A riveting but harrowing account of a young Cambodian girl who's innocent idyllic childhood is swiftly obliterated by the invasion of the Khmer Rouge.
Loung at 5 years old and one of seven children shares her traumatic story of the 4 years spent under the terrifying Khmer Rouge reign trying to survive after her family are forced to flee their home in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh in 1975, it details all the devastating hardships from being forced to live in a labour camp, starvation, disease and learning to become a child soldier, and then navigating dangerous landmine terrain to reunite with her family. The story is relentless, the bravery of these kids having to endure hunger, being separated from parents and siblings watching some of her family being taken away only to be led to their death, it reminds you that no child should ever have to deal with the devastation of genocide, the loss of human life for political purposes is truly one of the hardest things to read about. The book reminds me how lucky I am to have been immune to such horrors in my lifetime but it's also equally important to hear these stories and learn about the true testament of the human spirit, the courage and the fight to live and survive is truly amazing. What an amazing account, and what a brave, strong and tenacious girl she was, many people died and weren't so lucky to escape.
I'm so glad Loung lived to share her tale and how she was able to find a purpose with her mission in life to educate and inform by becoming a human rights activist and also the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.
Loung at 5 years old and one of seven children shares her traumatic story of the 4 years spent under the terrifying Khmer Rouge reign trying to survive after her family are forced to flee their home in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh in 1975, it details all the devastating hardships from being forced to live in a labour camp, starvation, disease and learning to become a child soldier, and then navigating dangerous landmine terrain to reunite with her family. The story is relentless, the bravery of these kids having to endure hunger, being separated from parents and siblings watching some of her family being taken away only to be led to their death, it reminds you that no child should ever have to deal with the devastation of genocide, the loss of human life for political purposes is truly one of the hardest things to read about. The book reminds me how lucky I am to have been immune to such horrors in my lifetime but it's also equally important to hear these stories and learn about the true testament of the human spirit, the courage and the fight to live and survive is truly amazing. What an amazing account, and what a brave, strong and tenacious girl she was, many people died and weren't so lucky to escape.
I'm so glad Loung lived to share her tale and how she was able to find a purpose with her mission in life to educate and inform by becoming a human rights activist and also the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.
February 4, 2016
I feel the need to explain why I ended up giving this one three stars. I expected to come out of this with no less than a four star review. Ung's suffering under the Khmer Rouge is long and both physically and mentally painful. I learned a lot about the Cambodian Genocide (at least from the point of view of a child). I always wanted to keep reading and was invested in her and her family's story. That being said, the pacing had me all over the place and the writing was... okay.
I felt a little lost and confused - like I was missing parts of the story that became relevant later on. Part of this is because the story is being told from the perspective of a 5-8 year old and, understandably, she doesn't comprehend everything that's happening around her, but it could have benefited from more information concerning the larger picture. Choosing to tell her story the way she did had more drawbacks than benefits in my opinion.
The writing was great in certain spots and then really bad in others. Enough to make me question what the editors were thinking when they read it (words missing, words repeated in the same sentence, bad sentence structure), though this only seemed to be an issue toward the end.
I'm a bit disappointed. I was expecting to get more out of this memoir than I did. The book isn't that long! She easily could have expanded on certain things and still kept the book at a reasonable length. It has made me want to read and understand more about the Cambodian Genocide, but part of that is because I was left lacking explanations.
I felt a little lost and confused - like I was missing parts of the story that became relevant later on. Part of this is because the story is being told from the perspective of a 5-8 year old and, understandably, she doesn't comprehend everything that's happening around her, but it could have benefited from more information concerning the larger picture. Choosing to tell her story the way she did had more drawbacks than benefits in my opinion.
The writing was great in certain spots and then really bad in others. Enough to make me question what the editors were thinking when they read it (words missing, words repeated in the same sentence, bad sentence structure), though this only seemed to be an issue toward the end.
I'm a bit disappointed. I was expecting to get more out of this memoir than I did. The book isn't that long! She easily could have expanded on certain things and still kept the book at a reasonable length. It has made me want to read and understand more about the Cambodian Genocide, but part of that is because I was left lacking explanations.
August 12, 2018
The three stars are all for the content. The book gives some insight into how it must have felt to be dragged out of your home and forced into the countryside, to see atrocities around you, to lose close members of your family, and not really understand what was happening or what would happen next. I really did, however, have problems with the narrative choice of the book even if I felt I understood what the writer was trying to achieve. The story is told by a five year old who has a cognitive awareness well beyond her years and a supreme mastery of the English language, and it is told in the present tense. This gnawed at me page after page. I really would have been happier with a past tense account with some explanation of her lack of understanding of events. I am probably alone in my feelings about this, and possibly being unreasonable, but it did have an effect on my reception of the book.
October 20, 2020
Popsugar Challenge 2020 - A book set in a country beginning with C
This is an own voices account of the Pol Pot regime, the regime that killed two million Cambodians, a quarter of the country's population and its a hard read. It felt physically exhausting to tell you the truth.
I visited Cambodia in 2018 and did not meet a single Cambodian who did not lose their parents in this genocide. I stood in the killing fields and saw the clothing of those murdered start to penetrate the soil surface as with each rainy season that passes, the mass graves become more exposed. You can smell the death in the air.
Whether you've been or not this is a brutal read, it raw and its beyond distressing.
Angelina Jolie and her adopted son Maddox (a Cambodian) have produced a Netflix original film based on this book under the same name which is also well worth watching.
I'm not here to rate peoples lives, an auto five star from me.
This is an own voices account of the Pol Pot regime, the regime that killed two million Cambodians, a quarter of the country's population and its a hard read. It felt physically exhausting to tell you the truth.
I visited Cambodia in 2018 and did not meet a single Cambodian who did not lose their parents in this genocide. I stood in the killing fields and saw the clothing of those murdered start to penetrate the soil surface as with each rainy season that passes, the mass graves become more exposed. You can smell the death in the air.
Whether you've been or not this is a brutal read, it raw and its beyond distressing.
Angelina Jolie and her adopted son Maddox (a Cambodian) have produced a Netflix original film based on this book under the same name which is also well worth watching.
I'm not here to rate peoples lives, an auto five star from me.
December 12, 2015
I visited SE Asia this year & visiting S-21 prison & the Killing Fields moved me more than anything else I saw.
& this book moved me more than anything else I read this year.
No child should suffer what Loung does and she doesn't flinch from telling things that show her in a less than favourable light - but if she hadn't been an extremely tough five year old, she would never have survived
Some recountings are like visualisations from when Loung was much older, but although they are a little jarring I think they are an important part of her story.
Most highly recommended!
& this book moved me more than anything else I read this year.
No child should suffer what Loung does and she doesn't flinch from telling things that show her in a less than favourable light - but if she hadn't been an extremely tough five year old, she would never have survived
Some recountings are like visualisations from when Loung was much older, but although they are a little jarring I think they are an important part of her story.
Most highly recommended!
June 28, 2020
This book broke my heart into pieces...
I read this book for the Diversity in All Forms! book club. If you would like to participate in the discussion here is the link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
"One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed."
I read this book for the Diversity in All Forms! book club. If you would like to participate in the discussion here is the link: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
"One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed."
December 14, 2018
Mit diesem Buch habe ich meine A-Z Autorinnenchallenge abgeschlossen und ich habe es nicht bereut. Ursprünglich wollte ich ja ein anders lesen, aber das andere lässt sich auch hervorragend in die 2019er Eu-Autorinnenchallenge einbauen.
Dieses Werk habe ich gewählt, weil ein Lesefreund mich darauf aufmerksam gemacht hat und weil ich am Schauplatz der autobiografischen Geschichte überall im Jahr 2015 war: Killing Fields, Pnom Penh, Die Gefängnisse, Tonle Sap der Norden Kambodschas... Auch durfte ich einem anderen, sehr alten Überlebenden des Foltergefängnisses in Pnom Penh die Hand schütteln und ihm seine Biografie abkaufen.
Doch nun von der Motivation zum Werk selbst. Stilistisch ist es doch etwas verwirrend gestrickt, weil die Autorin Präsens und Ich-Form eines kleinen Mädchens, der Protagonistin, gewählt hat, die dann aber nicht immer authentisch kindgerecht sondern oft wie eine erwachsene Schriftstellerin formuliert. Bei jedem komplexen Wort - teilweise präsentiert die Autorin einen ausnehmend komplexen Sprachschatz - und bei den öfter eingestreuten Konjunktivsatzkonstruktionen hat es mich als Leserin geschüttelt, weil dieser Stil so ambivalent und definitiv verwirrend ist wenn so etws ein 5-9 jähriges Mädchen formuliert.
Trotz dieser zugegebenermaßen ernsteren stilistischen Mängel hat Luong Ung aber etwas Wichtiges zu erzählen. Die Geschichte der Familie ist herzzerreißend, im Wohlstand beginnend und anschließend geprägt von permanenter Flucht, Hunger, Krankheit und Tod, erst stirbt die die Schwester, dann werden Vater und Mutter von den Soldaten abgeholt und erschossen. Anschießend irren drei voneinander getrennte minderjährige Kinder durch die Lager, finden sich zufällig wieder und machen sich auf, ihre restlichen erwachsenen Geschwister zu suchen.
Auch die Beschreibungen der Landschaft, der Leute und der Situationen sind plastisch realistisch und eindrücklich, das kann die Luong Ung sehr gut. Pnom Penh war 2015 genauso, wie die Autorin die Stadt 1975 so anschaulich geschildert hat. Hat sich fast gar nix geändert, bis auf ein paar Hochhäuser als Hotels. Auch ein paar Gedenkstätten als Lager habe ich gesehen und darin natürlich auch die Zeitdokumente der Insassen. Diese stimmen mit meinen Eindrücken deckungsgleich überein.
Das Thema der Kindersoldaten ist zudem ein spannender Aspekt in der Geschichte dieses Krieges der Roten Khmer gegen ihre eigene Bevölkerung. Auch wenn die Protagonistin als junges Mädchen zwar nicht authentisch formuliert, da sie in der Ich-Form von einem kleinen Mädchen gesprochen werden, findet das erwachsene Ich der Autorin aber dennoch sehr weise Worte, die sie kurz und knackig auf den Punkt bringt:
"Seine Regierung hat ein rachgieriges, blutdürstiges Volk geschaffen. Pol Pot hat aus mir ein kleines Mädchen gemacht, das töten will."
Eines sollte noch gesagt werden. Diese Familiengeschichte ist harter Tobak und nichts für zarte Gemüter, dennoch sollten wir auch auf einen solchen grausamen "Krieg" (eigentlich ja nur Konflikt in einem Land) hinschauen.
Fazit: Weil mir persönlich die Geschichte, die erzählt wird, immer wichtiger ist als die formale Struktur, bin ich über die Erzählkonstruktion sehr schnell hinweggekommen, und weil es zudem an sprachlich ausgereiften Sätzen überhaupt nicht gemangelt hat. Deshalb vergebe ich 3,5+ Sterne, die ich leichten Herzens gerne auf 4 Sterne aufrunden möchte.
P.S.: Die Biografie ist 2017 von Angelina Jolie als Regisseurin verfilmt worden und war 2018 für den Auslandsoscar nomiert. Läuft bei uns in Österreich in den Programmkinos
Dieses Werk habe ich gewählt, weil ein Lesefreund mich darauf aufmerksam gemacht hat und weil ich am Schauplatz der autobiografischen Geschichte überall im Jahr 2015 war: Killing Fields, Pnom Penh, Die Gefängnisse, Tonle Sap der Norden Kambodschas... Auch durfte ich einem anderen, sehr alten Überlebenden des Foltergefängnisses in Pnom Penh die Hand schütteln und ihm seine Biografie abkaufen.
Doch nun von der Motivation zum Werk selbst. Stilistisch ist es doch etwas verwirrend gestrickt, weil die Autorin Präsens und Ich-Form eines kleinen Mädchens, der Protagonistin, gewählt hat, die dann aber nicht immer authentisch kindgerecht sondern oft wie eine erwachsene Schriftstellerin formuliert. Bei jedem komplexen Wort - teilweise präsentiert die Autorin einen ausnehmend komplexen Sprachschatz - und bei den öfter eingestreuten Konjunktivsatzkonstruktionen hat es mich als Leserin geschüttelt, weil dieser Stil so ambivalent und definitiv verwirrend ist wenn so etws ein 5-9 jähriges Mädchen formuliert.
Trotz dieser zugegebenermaßen ernsteren stilistischen Mängel hat Luong Ung aber etwas Wichtiges zu erzählen. Die Geschichte der Familie ist herzzerreißend, im Wohlstand beginnend und anschließend geprägt von permanenter Flucht, Hunger, Krankheit und Tod, erst stirbt die die Schwester, dann werden Vater und Mutter von den Soldaten abgeholt und erschossen. Anschießend irren drei voneinander getrennte minderjährige Kinder durch die Lager, finden sich zufällig wieder und machen sich auf, ihre restlichen erwachsenen Geschwister zu suchen.
Auch die Beschreibungen der Landschaft, der Leute und der Situationen sind plastisch realistisch und eindrücklich, das kann die Luong Ung sehr gut. Pnom Penh war 2015 genauso, wie die Autorin die Stadt 1975 so anschaulich geschildert hat. Hat sich fast gar nix geändert, bis auf ein paar Hochhäuser als Hotels. Auch ein paar Gedenkstätten als Lager habe ich gesehen und darin natürlich auch die Zeitdokumente der Insassen. Diese stimmen mit meinen Eindrücken deckungsgleich überein.
Das Thema der Kindersoldaten ist zudem ein spannender Aspekt in der Geschichte dieses Krieges der Roten Khmer gegen ihre eigene Bevölkerung. Auch wenn die Protagonistin als junges Mädchen zwar nicht authentisch formuliert, da sie in der Ich-Form von einem kleinen Mädchen gesprochen werden, findet das erwachsene Ich der Autorin aber dennoch sehr weise Worte, die sie kurz und knackig auf den Punkt bringt:
"Seine Regierung hat ein rachgieriges, blutdürstiges Volk geschaffen. Pol Pot hat aus mir ein kleines Mädchen gemacht, das töten will."
Eines sollte noch gesagt werden. Diese Familiengeschichte ist harter Tobak und nichts für zarte Gemüter, dennoch sollten wir auch auf einen solchen grausamen "Krieg" (eigentlich ja nur Konflikt in einem Land) hinschauen.
Fazit: Weil mir persönlich die Geschichte, die erzählt wird, immer wichtiger ist als die formale Struktur, bin ich über die Erzählkonstruktion sehr schnell hinweggekommen, und weil es zudem an sprachlich ausgereiften Sätzen überhaupt nicht gemangelt hat. Deshalb vergebe ich 3,5+ Sterne, die ich leichten Herzens gerne auf 4 Sterne aufrunden möchte.
P.S.: Die Biografie ist 2017 von Angelina Jolie als Regisseurin verfilmt worden und war 2018 für den Auslandsoscar nomiert. Läuft bei uns in Österreich in den Programmkinos
December 23, 2022
It's complex how I inadvertently ended up hearing a lot of stuff from different sides of politics. I still occasionally end up at dinner tables with people who think and speak openly in racist/sexist opinions around me. I am married to a man who was a conservative Republican (now, a conservative Democrat) who is eleven years older than me. He is of ‘the Greatest Generation.’ I am a ‘Baby Boomer.’
I recognize a genocide is occurring when I hear about certain mass slaughters of people. Usually the murders are happening because of differences in race, religion or ethnicity. In reading other autobiographies like ‘First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers’ by Loung Ung I see the slaughter of children happens in ALL of them.
'First They Killed My Father', the autobiography of surviving a genocide by Loung Ung, first published in 2000, is a harrowing read. But however terrible the description of life under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communists was, it is an important and necessary book for people to read. We lucky people of the Western World are oblivious to the worst men can do. We'd rather blithely attribute the cause of genocides to the innocent victims somehow. We don't care to really understand the genesis of genocides, and we often don't take the time to learn about them.
I worked as a secretary at a public school which accepted Muslim refugees from the Serbian-Yugoslavian war and one of the Somalian wars. I heard stories from the Sarajevo children - like, they had to pick out the bits fallen off of nearby floating and rotting bodies in the river water they had gone to fetch or bathe in when they were ten years old.
Five to ten years old is the age where a lot of authors who witnessed a genocide seem to begin their true stories. They write of their innocent childhoods. Then the sudden killing all around them begins of their parents, grandparents, cousins, friends and neighbors, without much warning, during an ordinary day of work and school. The looting starts by soldiers or strangers doing the killing and raping. The burning down of their childhood homes. Next, comes starvation. No home to sleep inside. No rights to anything, for anything. The stench of death everywhere. Dead and mutilated ordinary people lying on the ground of neighborhood yards and streets, unburied. All this seen and experienced by five year olds who somehow survive, grow up, and write an autobiography like this one.
Gentle reader, 'First They Killed My Father' is about the genocide which happened in Cambodia in 1975-1980. What makes this autobiography particularly wrenching and poignant is it is written by a survivor who was a child during the murders of her family. How she survived is a genuine miracle.
The book's one flaw is the author narrates, present tense, of her experience AS a five year old with too much verbal and intellectual proficiency for any five year old narrator I have ever known (excepting one three-year-old genius I met in my past). There is a mix of child and adult awareness in the book’s narration. The author speaks with the mental dexterity and vocabulary of an adult in words of what probably were inchoate feelings of rage and loss when she was really five years old. But like myself who has memories of stuff which happened when I was two, she remembers it all.
Trauma does that to some of us - nightmare images imprinted permanently, into unforgotten vivid memories. Context may be missing. For awhile. Then a call to a psychologist is sometimes necessary to help with the context of the memories...
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot:
"Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who governed Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and a Khmer nationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 until 1997 and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Under his administration, Cambodia was converted into a one-party communist state governed according to Pol Pot's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism."
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_R...
"The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, xenophobic, paranoid, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Maha Lout Ploh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward, which caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivisation similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency even in the supply of medicine led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Arbitrary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the death of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population."
The social labels change, the political justifications change, the group enduring genocidal techniques changes - but the techniques of genocide are forever.
-Vilification of the 'other' to justify mass murder or torture
-Murder of everybody in revenge for the past injustices of a few
-Built-in institutional inequality creating 'slave' classes
-Lack of support for universal and honest education for the masses
-Lack of health-care for both mental and physical ailments of the sick deemed useless to society
-Lack of support or respect for the elderly
Many autobiographies by people who have survived genocides around the world are translated into English and have been purchased by libraries all over the world. Despite this, I often talk to people who know nothing of them. Some who are aware of genocides from the evening news or news websites often tell me it is because those people brought it on themselves, or they were sinful in the eyes of God, or they are of a lazy race of humans doomed to genocide because of their rotten or corrupt cultures and natures, or because of their 'wrong' religion. They lack discipline, I have been sometimes told, and they do not know the meaning of hard work.
I am not making up stories about what people in America have said. Many people believe these falsehoods about victims of genocides. These people I have known in my personal experience were White or of White American culture because I’m an elderly American and I have lived here all of my life in American cities. The people I have heard express opinions about genocides in other countries were born in America or are naturalized citizens. Many Americans are third-generation immigrants from India, China and Europe. Most were raised as Christians of one sort or another, some of which are considered cults, but some are Buddhists, or Hindus. No matter the religion or race, though, I have heard from many Americans that the victims of genocides somehow brought it on themselves.
I am in my late sixties, and I look mostly White. I was a quiet secretary during the era of IBM electric typewriters, and when physical paperwork copies were filed in physical cabinets, when secretary 'girls' had to know shorthand, and we had only male managers as bosses. People knew me as an obedient girl of no opinions. It was a normal presentation for women of all ages in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I married a White Republican eleven years older than me whose friends all tended to be conservatives, Republican or right-leaning libertarians/entrepreneurs, or White Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals. I ended up at parties (business and private) or with people in social situations who spoke in racist/sexist terms and jokes. People often utilized biblical commandments and beliefs to attribute reasons for their own successes or status in life. Or later, when I went to college as a 40-year-old, I heard students attribute their success to Buddha. Or gods in the Hindu faith.
Generally, they were nice people, even if sexist and racist. Most of them liked children and pets.
The prejudices and opinions from the friends and acquaintances of my older conservative husband (not the folks I met from my jobs or school, some being Buddhists and Hindu immigrants) came from ignorance. They had childhoods of being indoctrinated by equally ignorant and prejudiced 'Greatest Generation' parents or grandparents born around 1900. Most either never got a high school degree but worked up various ladders in America. A few got some kind of college degree. Most of them attained the middle-class through hard work AND because they were White men with acceptable culturally-appropriate American manners. Most were raised in White culture and neighborhoods, or aspired to join the culturally White middle-class. Most had kids, most wanted their kids to go to college, some did send their kids to college.
Many of these elderly folk now argue a lot with their adult college-educated kids and grandkids who vote Democrat and believe in what they, the conservatives, consider socialism or communism, which they, the conservatives, violently disagree with as a government choice. Then they pick up their social security checks and make doctor appointments paid by Medicare. They often have in their past bought their first homes or gone to school under GI Bill loans (if male and a veteran), or had gotten and worked first jobs under federal apprenticeship programs.
They still think genocides occur to people who were bad in some way, if they even are aware of any particular genocide. Often they know of one genocide - the Nazi one - but these others are either unknown to them or they believe they weren't genocides of the same level of horror as that of the Nazis trying to exterminate all of the Jews of Europe.
Sigh.
Today, I am no longer a quiet obedient secretary, but a bitter feminist bitch, and a lot more outspoken. I have a hell of a lot of opinions. Like this one - Wars and genocides kill a lot of innocent children, whatever their religion or ethnicity or culture or type of government. The sufferings of these children are enormous, horrible and soul-crushing. How do the sufferings of these millions of innocent young toddlers and children fit into the racist/cultural/religious theories of why they deserve to die or suffer mind-destroying tortures? Tell me how you, gentle reader, if you do, 'intellectualize' away the broken, sometimes raped, and abused bodies of children through the typical lenses which many adults use in genocidal wars of 'foreigners'? That their parents 'supported' the bad or wrong kind of religion, class, politics, culture?
You can't lie to me, those of you who still do not examine your beliefs and biases or ignorance or racial or cultural prejudices. I heard you. I saw you. You. Are. The. Bad. People.
I recognize a genocide is occurring when I hear about certain mass slaughters of people. Usually the murders are happening because of differences in race, religion or ethnicity. In reading other autobiographies like ‘First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers’ by Loung Ung I see the slaughter of children happens in ALL of them.
'First They Killed My Father', the autobiography of surviving a genocide by Loung Ung, first published in 2000, is a harrowing read. But however terrible the description of life under Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communists was, it is an important and necessary book for people to read. We lucky people of the Western World are oblivious to the worst men can do. We'd rather blithely attribute the cause of genocides to the innocent victims somehow. We don't care to really understand the genesis of genocides, and we often don't take the time to learn about them.
I worked as a secretary at a public school which accepted Muslim refugees from the Serbian-Yugoslavian war and one of the Somalian wars. I heard stories from the Sarajevo children - like, they had to pick out the bits fallen off of nearby floating and rotting bodies in the river water they had gone to fetch or bathe in when they were ten years old.
Five to ten years old is the age where a lot of authors who witnessed a genocide seem to begin their true stories. They write of their innocent childhoods. Then the sudden killing all around them begins of their parents, grandparents, cousins, friends and neighbors, without much warning, during an ordinary day of work and school. The looting starts by soldiers or strangers doing the killing and raping. The burning down of their childhood homes. Next, comes starvation. No home to sleep inside. No rights to anything, for anything. The stench of death everywhere. Dead and mutilated ordinary people lying on the ground of neighborhood yards and streets, unburied. All this seen and experienced by five year olds who somehow survive, grow up, and write an autobiography like this one.
Gentle reader, 'First They Killed My Father' is about the genocide which happened in Cambodia in 1975-1980. What makes this autobiography particularly wrenching and poignant is it is written by a survivor who was a child during the murders of her family. How she survived is a genuine miracle.
The book's one flaw is the author narrates, present tense, of her experience AS a five year old with too much verbal and intellectual proficiency for any five year old narrator I have ever known (excepting one three-year-old genius I met in my past). There is a mix of child and adult awareness in the book’s narration. The author speaks with the mental dexterity and vocabulary of an adult in words of what probably were inchoate feelings of rage and loss when she was really five years old. But like myself who has memories of stuff which happened when I was two, she remembers it all.
Trauma does that to some of us - nightmare images imprinted permanently, into unforgotten vivid memories. Context may be missing. For awhile. Then a call to a psychologist is sometimes necessary to help with the context of the memories...
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot:
"Pol Pot (born Saloth Sâr 19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998) was a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who governed Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and a Khmer nationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 until 1997 and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. Under his administration, Cambodia was converted into a one-party communist state governed according to Pol Pot's interpretation of Marxism–Leninism."
From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_R...
"The Khmer Rouge regime was highly autocratic, xenophobic, paranoid, and repressive. Many deaths resulted from the regime's social engineering policies and the "Maha Lout Ploh", an imitation of China's Great Leap Forward, which caused the Great Chinese Famine. The Khmer Rouge's attempts at agricultural reform through collectivisation similarly led to widespread famine, while its insistence on absolute self-sufficiency even in the supply of medicine led to the death of many thousands from treatable diseases such as malaria. The Khmer Rouge regime murdered hundreds of thousands of their perceived political opponents, and its racist emphasis on national purity resulted in the genocide of Cambodian minorities. Arbitrary executions and torture were carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during genocidal purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978. Ultimately, the Cambodian genocide led to the death of 1.5 to 2 million people, around 25% of Cambodia's population."
The social labels change, the political justifications change, the group enduring genocidal techniques changes - but the techniques of genocide are forever.
-Vilification of the 'other' to justify mass murder or torture
-Murder of everybody in revenge for the past injustices of a few
-Built-in institutional inequality creating 'slave' classes
-Lack of support for universal and honest education for the masses
-Lack of health-care for both mental and physical ailments of the sick deemed useless to society
-Lack of support or respect for the elderly
Many autobiographies by people who have survived genocides around the world are translated into English and have been purchased by libraries all over the world. Despite this, I often talk to people who know nothing of them. Some who are aware of genocides from the evening news or news websites often tell me it is because those people brought it on themselves, or they were sinful in the eyes of God, or they are of a lazy race of humans doomed to genocide because of their rotten or corrupt cultures and natures, or because of their 'wrong' religion. They lack discipline, I have been sometimes told, and they do not know the meaning of hard work.
I am not making up stories about what people in America have said. Many people believe these falsehoods about victims of genocides. These people I have known in my personal experience were White or of White American culture because I’m an elderly American and I have lived here all of my life in American cities. The people I have heard express opinions about genocides in other countries were born in America or are naturalized citizens. Many Americans are third-generation immigrants from India, China and Europe. Most were raised as Christians of one sort or another, some of which are considered cults, but some are Buddhists, or Hindus. No matter the religion or race, though, I have heard from many Americans that the victims of genocides somehow brought it on themselves.
I am in my late sixties, and I look mostly White. I was a quiet secretary during the era of IBM electric typewriters, and when physical paperwork copies were filed in physical cabinets, when secretary 'girls' had to know shorthand, and we had only male managers as bosses. People knew me as an obedient girl of no opinions. It was a normal presentation for women of all ages in the 1960’s and 1970’s. I married a White Republican eleven years older than me whose friends all tended to be conservatives, Republican or right-leaning libertarians/entrepreneurs, or White Christian fundamentalists/evangelicals. I ended up at parties (business and private) or with people in social situations who spoke in racist/sexist terms and jokes. People often utilized biblical commandments and beliefs to attribute reasons for their own successes or status in life. Or later, when I went to college as a 40-year-old, I heard students attribute their success to Buddha. Or gods in the Hindu faith.
Generally, they were nice people, even if sexist and racist. Most of them liked children and pets.
The prejudices and opinions from the friends and acquaintances of my older conservative husband (not the folks I met from my jobs or school, some being Buddhists and Hindu immigrants) came from ignorance. They had childhoods of being indoctrinated by equally ignorant and prejudiced 'Greatest Generation' parents or grandparents born around 1900. Most either never got a high school degree but worked up various ladders in America. A few got some kind of college degree. Most of them attained the middle-class through hard work AND because they were White men with acceptable culturally-appropriate American manners. Most were raised in White culture and neighborhoods, or aspired to join the culturally White middle-class. Most had kids, most wanted their kids to go to college, some did send their kids to college.
Many of these elderly folk now argue a lot with their adult college-educated kids and grandkids who vote Democrat and believe in what they, the conservatives, consider socialism or communism, which they, the conservatives, violently disagree with as a government choice. Then they pick up their social security checks and make doctor appointments paid by Medicare. They often have in their past bought their first homes or gone to school under GI Bill loans (if male and a veteran), or had gotten and worked first jobs under federal apprenticeship programs.
They still think genocides occur to people who were bad in some way, if they even are aware of any particular genocide. Often they know of one genocide - the Nazi one - but these others are either unknown to them or they believe they weren't genocides of the same level of horror as that of the Nazis trying to exterminate all of the Jews of Europe.
Sigh.
Today, I am no longer a quiet obedient secretary, but a bitter feminist bitch, and a lot more outspoken. I have a hell of a lot of opinions. Like this one - Wars and genocides kill a lot of innocent children, whatever their religion or ethnicity or culture or type of government. The sufferings of these children are enormous, horrible and soul-crushing. How do the sufferings of these millions of innocent young toddlers and children fit into the racist/cultural/religious theories of why they deserve to die or suffer mind-destroying tortures? Tell me how you, gentle reader, if you do, 'intellectualize' away the broken, sometimes raped, and abused bodies of children through the typical lenses which many adults use in genocidal wars of 'foreigners'? That their parents 'supported' the bad or wrong kind of religion, class, politics, culture?
You can't lie to me, those of you who still do not examine your beliefs and biases or ignorance or racial or cultural prejudices. I heard you. I saw you. You. Are. The. Bad. People.
October 11, 2013
This is a very difficult book to read. It is not eloquently written, but how do you write about the Khmer Rouge and what they did to the Cambodian people April 1975-1980 eloquently? One traumatic event after the other, from the first to the last page. Reading it I simply wanted to get to the end. I am not about to questions any of that written here……. I do think this book should be read. How do you rate a book like this?
October 15, 2018
Ein autobiografisches Buch, in welchem ein Mensch seine Traumata der Kindheit aufarbeitet, in einem Land, in dem einer der schrecklichsten Genozide der jüngeren Vergangenheit stattfand, ist schwer zu bewerten bzw. zu kritisieren. Per se ist der Mut, die Willensstärke, die Tapferkeit und das Leid, was diesen Menschen ausmacht, fünf Sterne wert. Aber ich will ja nicht den Autor und sein Leben beurteilen, sondern das gerade beendete Buch, welches zwar interessant zu lesen war, aber auch so viele Ungereimtheiten aufwies.
Loung Ung schreibt ihre Kindheitserlebnisse, die sie zwischen ihrem 5. bis 10. Lebensjahr in Kambodscha im Präsens. Warum weigert sich ein Autor Vergangenes in der Vergangenheit zu schreiben? Soll dies authentischer klingen oder bewegender oder unmittelbarer? Soll der Leser das Gefühl haben, dass er beim Erzählen über das Abschlachten durch die Roten Khmer er quasi mitten im Geschehen ist? Mich irritiert so etwas ungemein, genauso wie die Sprache, die dieses Kind spricht. Ung verwendet die meiste Zeit eine kurze, prägnante Sprache, die recht kindgerecht wirkt, aber immer wieder schleichen sich dann Sätze und vor allem Ausdrücke in die Erzählung, die absolut nicht kindgerecht sind. Zudem kann sich kein Mensch derart detailliert an seine frühe Kindheit erinnern, wo ich wieder beim Thema bin: Wieviel Fiktion steckt in einer Autobiografie? Leider werde ich aufgrund der Erzählweise den Eindruck nicht los, dass viele Erfundenes und Ausgeschmücktes die Schilderungen der kleinen Loung zieren. Und das ist schade, denn mein Neugierde bezüglich der schrecklichen historischen Begebenheit giert nach Fakten, und so ertappte ich mich, dass ich nicht mehr wusste, ob das nun real oder fiktiv war, was ich gelesen habe.
Das mag ein ganz persönliches Problem von mir sein. Andere Leser mögen sich von derartigen gefühlsbetonten Autobiografien angesprochener fühlen. Für mich wäre ein mit Abstand erzählter Rückblick einer Betroffenen mit geschichtlichen Hintergründen wohl besser. Die Autorin ist beispielsweise Aktivisten gegen Landminen, doch hierzu geht das Buch gar nicht ein. Auch ist mein Interesse über die Beweggründe für die Schreckensherrschaft der Roten Khmer nach dem Buch eher geweckt, als gestillt. Und abschließend noch eine Ohrfeige für den Fischer-Verlag, denn wieder einmal bekommt der deutsche Leser einen gefühlsschwangeren Buchtitel präsentiert, der sich kaum im Buch widerspiegelt und meines Erachtens nur auf der Emo-Schiene den Verkauf fördern soll. Es geht Ung wirklich sehr selten um Hoffnung, es geht ihr meist um Rache, Zorn, Wut, Vergeltung und Hass. Das meine ich nicht abwertend, sondern hierfür habe ich nachdem, was dieses arme Mädchen erlebt hat, absolut Verständnis, nachdem die Eltern und zwei Schwestern umgebracht wurden. Und daher ist auch der Originaltitel "First They Killed My Father" so treffend. Aber so einen Titel kann man offensichtlich dem deutschen Büchermarkt nicht zumuten. Fehlte nur noch, dass man eine Lotusblüten mit einem Schmetterling auf das Cover platzierte.
Auch wenn ich vieles an dem Buch nicht stimmig für mich fand, bin ich doch sehr froh es gelesen zu haben und würde es trotzdem unbedingt weiterempfehlen. Insofern ist meine Rezension genauso unstimmig wie das Buch selbst.
Loung Ung schreibt ihre Kindheitserlebnisse, die sie zwischen ihrem 5. bis 10. Lebensjahr in Kambodscha im Präsens. Warum weigert sich ein Autor Vergangenes in der Vergangenheit zu schreiben? Soll dies authentischer klingen oder bewegender oder unmittelbarer? Soll der Leser das Gefühl haben, dass er beim Erzählen über das Abschlachten durch die Roten Khmer er quasi mitten im Geschehen ist? Mich irritiert so etwas ungemein, genauso wie die Sprache, die dieses Kind spricht. Ung verwendet die meiste Zeit eine kurze, prägnante Sprache, die recht kindgerecht wirkt, aber immer wieder schleichen sich dann Sätze und vor allem Ausdrücke in die Erzählung, die absolut nicht kindgerecht sind. Zudem kann sich kein Mensch derart detailliert an seine frühe Kindheit erinnern, wo ich wieder beim Thema bin: Wieviel Fiktion steckt in einer Autobiografie? Leider werde ich aufgrund der Erzählweise den Eindruck nicht los, dass viele Erfundenes und Ausgeschmücktes die Schilderungen der kleinen Loung zieren. Und das ist schade, denn mein Neugierde bezüglich der schrecklichen historischen Begebenheit giert nach Fakten, und so ertappte ich mich, dass ich nicht mehr wusste, ob das nun real oder fiktiv war, was ich gelesen habe.
Das mag ein ganz persönliches Problem von mir sein. Andere Leser mögen sich von derartigen gefühlsbetonten Autobiografien angesprochener fühlen. Für mich wäre ein mit Abstand erzählter Rückblick einer Betroffenen mit geschichtlichen Hintergründen wohl besser. Die Autorin ist beispielsweise Aktivisten gegen Landminen, doch hierzu geht das Buch gar nicht ein. Auch ist mein Interesse über die Beweggründe für die Schreckensherrschaft der Roten Khmer nach dem Buch eher geweckt, als gestillt. Und abschließend noch eine Ohrfeige für den Fischer-Verlag, denn wieder einmal bekommt der deutsche Leser einen gefühlsschwangeren Buchtitel präsentiert, der sich kaum im Buch widerspiegelt und meines Erachtens nur auf der Emo-Schiene den Verkauf fördern soll. Es geht Ung wirklich sehr selten um Hoffnung, es geht ihr meist um Rache, Zorn, Wut, Vergeltung und Hass. Das meine ich nicht abwertend, sondern hierfür habe ich nachdem, was dieses arme Mädchen erlebt hat, absolut Verständnis, nachdem die Eltern und zwei Schwestern umgebracht wurden. Und daher ist auch der Originaltitel "First They Killed My Father" so treffend. Aber so einen Titel kann man offensichtlich dem deutschen Büchermarkt nicht zumuten. Fehlte nur noch, dass man eine Lotusblüten mit einem Schmetterling auf das Cover platzierte.
Auch wenn ich vieles an dem Buch nicht stimmig für mich fand, bin ich doch sehr froh es gelesen zu haben und würde es trotzdem unbedingt weiterempfehlen. Insofern ist meine Rezension genauso unstimmig wie das Buch selbst.
November 9, 2019
3 stars
This book is written by Looung Ung - as a child - the child that ran from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the Vietnam Conflict. Ung spent 4 years running with her family. A young child from a family of 7 children she had lived a wealthy life in Phnom Penh until the Khmer Rouge entered their city. During her flee to freedom her family was displaced and separated. She finally ended up in a refugee camp, on a small schooner with many other people and traveled to America to join one of her brothers.
On one hand having read the book Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison I understood more of what Ung was going through. On the other hand I believe that having read that book it also took something away from this book, causing me to rate it lower than I would have.
There is a movie directed by Angelina Jolie with the same name as this book.
This book is written by Looung Ung - as a child - the child that ran from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the Vietnam Conflict. Ung spent 4 years running with her family. A young child from a family of 7 children she had lived a wealthy life in Phnom Penh until the Khmer Rouge entered their city. During her flee to freedom her family was displaced and separated. She finally ended up in a refugee camp, on a small schooner with many other people and traveled to America to join one of her brothers.
On one hand having read the book Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison I understood more of what Ung was going through. On the other hand I believe that having read that book it also took something away from this book, causing me to rate it lower than I would have.
There is a movie directed by Angelina Jolie with the same name as this book.
July 30, 2018
Read for Tales & Co. | Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung is a memoir of the author’s childhood living under the Pol Pot regime. It opens right before the Khmer Rouge army storms into Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ung’s family has to abandon their home and belongings overnight and ends with her migration to the United States. Encapsulated within is the story of a young Chinese-Cambodian girl who survived a genocide that exterminated millions of her people.
As I had no previous knowledge of this event, the dreadful title of the memoir kept my stomach in knots as my mind constantly speculated over when such tragedies would come to an end, or if they would at all. Not helped by the fact that the tortures inflicted on the author and her family are relentless and without mercy. Living under an oppressive regime where all individuality is stripped is scary enough but the consistent humiliations and threat of annihilation synthesized a dystopian society in my head unlike any other. Last year I’d read The Rape of Nanking and while that book is a textbook autopsy of war crimes, horrors that have been speculated to be the cause for the author’s suicide, First They Killed My Father somehow felt even more devastating because a young child stood at the center screaming for justice.
The memoir is somewhat fictionalized with snippets of dream-like imaginations from the young Ung. It’s debatable whether these scenes are a reaction to the trauma inflicted upon her or some other underlying psychological condition. I’m not a huge fan of creative nonfiction so I don’t care about having to question the validity of the way a nonfiction narrative unfolds, however, in this case, I didn’t object to Ung’s approach to storytelling. The fictionalized events read like self-inflicted wounds but perhaps awarded the author some therapy I must allow as an interloper.
If you have even the slightest appreciation for engaging memoirs, First They Killed My Father is a must-read. If not for the fact that it reads like fiction then to educate oneself about one of the most sickening genocides in modern history.
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung is a memoir of the author’s childhood living under the Pol Pot regime. It opens right before the Khmer Rouge army storms into Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ung’s family has to abandon their home and belongings overnight and ends with her migration to the United States. Encapsulated within is the story of a young Chinese-Cambodian girl who survived a genocide that exterminated millions of her people.
As I had no previous knowledge of this event, the dreadful title of the memoir kept my stomach in knots as my mind constantly speculated over when such tragedies would come to an end, or if they would at all. Not helped by the fact that the tortures inflicted on the author and her family are relentless and without mercy. Living under an oppressive regime where all individuality is stripped is scary enough but the consistent humiliations and threat of annihilation synthesized a dystopian society in my head unlike any other. Last year I’d read The Rape of Nanking and while that book is a textbook autopsy of war crimes, horrors that have been speculated to be the cause for the author’s suicide, First They Killed My Father somehow felt even more devastating because a young child stood at the center screaming for justice.
The memoir is somewhat fictionalized with snippets of dream-like imaginations from the young Ung. It’s debatable whether these scenes are a reaction to the trauma inflicted upon her or some other underlying psychological condition. I’m not a huge fan of creative nonfiction so I don’t care about having to question the validity of the way a nonfiction narrative unfolds, however, in this case, I didn’t object to Ung’s approach to storytelling. The fictionalized events read like self-inflicted wounds but perhaps awarded the author some therapy I must allow as an interloper.
If you have even the slightest appreciation for engaging memoirs, First They Killed My Father is a must-read. If not for the fact that it reads like fiction then to educate oneself about one of the most sickening genocides in modern history.
March 13, 2009
On Monday I finished reading First They Killed My Father which is the autobiographical story of a young girl's experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. I've read a lot of books like this and I usually find them uplifting but this book just made me sad. In Rwanda, you see people's incredible resilience and determination to overcome the prejudices of the past. When I read the story of the boy solider, A Long Way Gone, I was heartened by the knowledge that he had escaped that life and become a strong and motivational person.
The problem is that I cannot derive anything positive at all from what happened in Cambodia. For four years the Khmer Rouge government systematically worked, starved and tortured to death 20% of the population. The reason that I picked up this book in the first place is that they have started genocide trials in Cambodia now and I wanted to understand why. I have collected a couple of links over at my other blog to make a start at understanding what happened.
This excellent and tender book details the experiences of a 5-year-old girl as she experiences starvation and the loss of her family members. She acknowledges at the start of the book that her brothers and sister helped her with the book and this accounts for the strong recall of conversations and events. This is a book rich in details about both the cosmopolitan life in Phnom Penh in the early 70s and the desperate futility of the Khmer Rouge regime.
I would unequivocally recommend this book to everyone that I know. I think everyone should read it to understand both what happened and the necessity behind bringing the Khmer Rouge members to trial. It is a really easy book to read and you will find it quite difficult to put down. But yes... in the end it is a very sad story. I have the most uneasy feeling that in 30 years time, we will be reading similar stories about Darfur and we'll be left wondering why we didn't do anything about it.
November 24, 2007
This was a heart-breaking memoir. It was very difficult to read . . . but imagine how much harder it was to live it.
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November 16, 2020The Cambodian Genocide is not one you learn about in schools or often hear people mention when they are asked to recall genocides that have happened in the 20th century, but it should be. This book floored me. I had to often remind myself that what I am reading is a recollection of factual events and not fiction because they were so horrific and described humanity it is utmost cruellest form.
We see the story unfold through Luong's eyes, starting as a 5-year-old. She takes us along on her journey as a young girl living in opulence and stability, ripped away from everything she knows and thrown into a world of unrelenting violence and torture, totally void of any compassion and mercy.
The Khmer Rouge aimed to establish a classless communist state based on a rural agrarian economy and a complete rejection of the free market and capitalism. This resulted in the abolishment of money, religious practices, places of worship and schools. Universities and government buildings were either closed or turned into reeducation camps and prisons. Now living as part of a society that murders its citizens for being intellectuals, professionals and ethnic minorities, Luong and her family must hide their true identities in a desperate effort to survive. Anything that signified they were 'impure' would have cost them their lives and the Khmer Rouge did not extend any mercy to children.
There is a constant sense of hopelessness whilst reading and thinking about how this young girl will not only survive but escape a ruthless regime. And if she does, how will she be able to live a normal life after witnessing the atrocities she did. Thankfully she does escape and has been able to share her harrowing and brave story with the world. Luong's book is a difficult read but also an incredibly important one. Books like this fill in the gaps of history that would have been either forgotten or erased over time.
I think it is pertinent to mention here that there is a current genocide happening against Uyghur Muslims in China. If you do not know about it, please do your research and also raise awareness. If the excuse for lack of awareness and action during the Cambodian Genocide was lack of reporting and media, then we do not have that excuse. Especially when social media has the power it does today. The information is there if you make the effort to look it up and educate yourself.
We see the story unfold through Luong's eyes, starting as a 5-year-old. She takes us along on her journey as a young girl living in opulence and stability, ripped away from everything she knows and thrown into a world of unrelenting violence and torture, totally void of any compassion and mercy.
The Khmer Rouge aimed to establish a classless communist state based on a rural agrarian economy and a complete rejection of the free market and capitalism. This resulted in the abolishment of money, religious practices, places of worship and schools. Universities and government buildings were either closed or turned into reeducation camps and prisons. Now living as part of a society that murders its citizens for being intellectuals, professionals and ethnic minorities, Luong and her family must hide their true identities in a desperate effort to survive. Anything that signified they were 'impure' would have cost them their lives and the Khmer Rouge did not extend any mercy to children.
There is a constant sense of hopelessness whilst reading and thinking about how this young girl will not only survive but escape a ruthless regime. And if she does, how will she be able to live a normal life after witnessing the atrocities she did. Thankfully she does escape and has been able to share her harrowing and brave story with the world. Luong's book is a difficult read but also an incredibly important one. Books like this fill in the gaps of history that would have been either forgotten or erased over time.
I think it is pertinent to mention here that there is a current genocide happening against Uyghur Muslims in China. If you do not know about it, please do your research and also raise awareness. If the excuse for lack of awareness and action during the Cambodian Genocide was lack of reporting and media, then we do not have that excuse. Especially when social media has the power it does today. The information is there if you make the effort to look it up and educate yourself.
October 26, 2008
I just finished reading this book - another one I had a hard time putting down - I read it in 3 days. I learned so much from this memoir which takes place, starting in April 1975 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. At this point the Cambodian Civil War has not quite taken hold. The narrator of the story is a 5 year old girl, the 2nd to youngest in a family of 7 children. She comes from a rather well-off, very loving middle-class family who live in the capital of Cambodia; Phenom Penh. The 5 year old takes us through 5 years of the war up to the S. Vietnamese liberating them. Eventually, she makes her way to the U.S. as a refugee.
This unbelieveably true story had me in tears in places. The author, Loung Ung is a real survivor. She also wrote a sequel to this one called Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind which I plan on reading.
For those of you who enjoy reading memoirs that take place in far off places, or about historical eras, or to read a book about a very strong woman who is a real survivor; I would highly recommend this book. It is very educational & at the same time, moving, emotional & thought provoking.
This unbelieveably true story had me in tears in places. The author, Loung Ung is a real survivor. She also wrote a sequel to this one called Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind which I plan on reading.
For those of you who enjoy reading memoirs that take place in far off places, or about historical eras, or to read a book about a very strong woman who is a real survivor; I would highly recommend this book. It is very educational & at the same time, moving, emotional & thought provoking.
July 2, 2013
Very often, when people are asked to recall genocides in 20th century, Jews Holocaust, Stalin's purge, Rwanda or the Cultural Revolution are the very first things come to mind. People rarely remember the Cambodia genocide (or they have never heard of) as it was always overshadowed by the Vietnam war with no or little media coverage. However, it doesn't mean this is any less painful. I admire Loung Ung for her dedication on telling the world what happened under the rule of Khmer Rogue.
I'm glad that I came across this book while searching for a perfect book on Cambodia history. The author takes us through this event through the eyes of a 5 years old child which make it much easier to digest comparing to any history book. Although this book doesn't elaborate the situation in terms of politics, it entices you to find out more by yourself.
I'm glad that I came across this book while searching for a perfect book on Cambodia history. The author takes us through this event through the eyes of a 5 years old child which make it much easier to digest comparing to any history book. Although this book doesn't elaborate the situation in terms of politics, it entices you to find out more by yourself.
December 22, 2018
4,5. Vaya viaje más intenso. Siempre que empiezo un libro que nos habla sobre la historia real de, en este caso, la propia autora, me da algo de miedo. Principalmente porque, aunque normalmente satisfactorio, suele ser un viaje muy duro. Y es el caso de esta historia.
Nos encontramos en Camboya con una familia de clase media compuesta por una madre, un padre y siete hijos. Éstos acomodados en las privilegios de pertenecer a una clase social más alta, verán como su mundo se derrumba con la toma de posesión de los Jemeres rojos y su líder Pol Pot. Guerra, torturas, muertes, violaciones... Una guerra horrible, que resuena más aún al saber que fue cierta.
Me ha resultado muy interesante descubrir que la revolución cultural China no fue algo que ocurriera solo en allí. Aunque con otro nombre también ocurrió algo similar en Vietnam, y lo mismo ocurrió en Camboya con los Jemeres rojos. Y a saber en cuantos sitios más. Lo curiosos de esta guerra es que lo líderes usaron la ingorancia y cultura de la gente de pueblo para iniciar una guerra contra la cultura y el conocimiento, y las personas que los poseían. En este mundo en guerra tener posesiones o tener una profesión diferente de la que implica la vida en el campo, era considerado demoniaco y en contra del líder Pol Pot y de Camboya. Y, por tanto, implicaba la muerte.
En definitiva, un libro muy duro, muy intenso. No para todos los estómagos. Pero que sin embargo tiene un halo esperanzador a causa de Loung Ung, que nos narra la historia en primera persona. Tuvo que convertirse en una mujer fuerte y poderosa con tan solo 5 años. Increíble viaje.
Nos encontramos en Camboya con una familia de clase media compuesta por una madre, un padre y siete hijos. Éstos acomodados en las privilegios de pertenecer a una clase social más alta, verán como su mundo se derrumba con la toma de posesión de los Jemeres rojos y su líder Pol Pot. Guerra, torturas, muertes, violaciones... Una guerra horrible, que resuena más aún al saber que fue cierta.
Me ha resultado muy interesante descubrir que la revolución cultural China no fue algo que ocurriera solo en allí. Aunque con otro nombre también ocurrió algo similar en Vietnam, y lo mismo ocurrió en Camboya con los Jemeres rojos. Y a saber en cuantos sitios más. Lo curiosos de esta guerra es que lo líderes usaron la ingorancia y cultura de la gente de pueblo para iniciar una guerra contra la cultura y el conocimiento, y las personas que los poseían. En este mundo en guerra tener posesiones o tener una profesión diferente de la que implica la vida en el campo, era considerado demoniaco y en contra del líder Pol Pot y de Camboya. Y, por tanto, implicaba la muerte.
En definitiva, un libro muy duro, muy intenso. No para todos los estómagos. Pero que sin embargo tiene un halo esperanzador a causa de Loung Ung, que nos narra la historia en primera persona. Tuvo que convertirse en una mujer fuerte y poderosa con tan solo 5 años. Increíble viaje.
January 30, 2021
This is a memoir of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (Kampuchea) from 1975 to 1980. It’s harrowing at times and sad but an important record.
Loung was only 5 when it started. She was the sixth of seven children living comfortably well off in Phnom Phen. Khmer Rouge soldiers forced everyone out of the cities to work in rice fields. The goal was to create a rich socialist, agrarian society (probably the stupidest idea since communism itself). Loung has a clear memory of the time despite her age. She is one of those people who have a clear and active mind and a vivid imagination. Even at her age, she saw through the propaganda BS.
Loung and her family worked long hours while starving, staying silent because everyone was informing on each other for food. She talks about the emotional toll of living in fear all the time. It led to hate and rage for her and many others. The educated were persecuted, so Loung and her siblings had to act stupid and illiterate. Ethnic cleansing took place. Her mother was half-Chinese, so they tried to darken their skin with dirt. People got sick but since all the doctors and nurses had been killed, hospitals were just where you went to die. I’m surprised as many of the family survived as they did.
Though the Angkar says we are all equal in Democratic Kampuchea, we are not. We live and are treated like slaves. In our garden, the Angkar provides us with seeds and we may plant anything we choose, but everything we grow belongs not to us but to the community. The base people eat the berries and vegetables from the community gardens, but the new people are punished if they do. During the harvest season the crops from the fields are turned over to the village chief, who then rations the food to the fifty families. As always, no matter how plentiful the crops, there is never enough food for the new people. Stealing food is viewed as a heinous crime and, if caught, offenders risk either getting their fingers cut off in the public square or being forced to grow a vegetable garden in an area near identified minefields. ... People who work in these areas do not come back to the village. ... In the new pure agrarian society, there is no place for disabled people.
Among the many crimes that exist in the Khmer Rouge society, bartering for food is viewed as an act of treason. If caught, the trader is whipped into confessing the names of all parties involved. The Khmer Rouge believes one individual should not have what the rest of the country does not have. When one person secretly acquires more food than the others have there is an inequality of food distribution in the community. Since we are all supposed to be equal, if one person starves, then all should starve.
The narration is in present tense. I didn’t really like it. Luong noted that she tried it in past tense first but it didn’t feel immediate. Still, I would’ve preferred past tense.
Language: None
Sexual Content: Some descriptions of nudity and attempted rape
Violence: Executions, beatings, war crimes
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
Loung was only 5 when it started. She was the sixth of seven children living comfortably well off in Phnom Phen. Khmer Rouge soldiers forced everyone out of the cities to work in rice fields. The goal was to create a rich socialist, agrarian society (probably the stupidest idea since communism itself). Loung has a clear memory of the time despite her age. She is one of those people who have a clear and active mind and a vivid imagination. Even at her age, she saw through the propaganda BS.
Loung and her family worked long hours while starving, staying silent because everyone was informing on each other for food. She talks about the emotional toll of living in fear all the time. It led to hate and rage for her and many others. The educated were persecuted, so Loung and her siblings had to act stupid and illiterate. Ethnic cleansing took place. Her mother was half-Chinese, so they tried to darken their skin with dirt. People got sick but since all the doctors and nurses had been killed, hospitals were just where you went to die. I’m surprised as many of the family survived as they did.
Though the Angkar says we are all equal in Democratic Kampuchea, we are not. We live and are treated like slaves. In our garden, the Angkar provides us with seeds and we may plant anything we choose, but everything we grow belongs not to us but to the community. The base people eat the berries and vegetables from the community gardens, but the new people are punished if they do. During the harvest season the crops from the fields are turned over to the village chief, who then rations the food to the fifty families. As always, no matter how plentiful the crops, there is never enough food for the new people. Stealing food is viewed as a heinous crime and, if caught, offenders risk either getting their fingers cut off in the public square or being forced to grow a vegetable garden in an area near identified minefields. ... People who work in these areas do not come back to the village. ... In the new pure agrarian society, there is no place for disabled people.
Among the many crimes that exist in the Khmer Rouge society, bartering for food is viewed as an act of treason. If caught, the trader is whipped into confessing the names of all parties involved. The Khmer Rouge believes one individual should not have what the rest of the country does not have. When one person secretly acquires more food than the others have there is an inequality of food distribution in the community. Since we are all supposed to be equal, if one person starves, then all should starve.
The narration is in present tense. I didn’t really like it. Luong noted that she tried it in past tense first but it didn’t feel immediate. Still, I would’ve preferred past tense.
Language: None
Sexual Content: Some descriptions of nudity and attempted rape
Violence: Executions, beatings, war crimes
Harm to Animals:
Harm to Children:
Other (Triggers):
July 30, 2016
The author's choice of using the present tense narration through her childhood eyes worked wonders for making you feel like you're a witness in the midst of the family's experiences.
Despite the Animal Farm-esque brutality, it's still heartening how you could see Loung transform from a spoilt and pampered city girl into a strong, albeit still selfish, fighter with a fierce drive for survival. The restrained expressions of emotions didn't hide the love shared between the family members and some of the best moments in the book occur during such scenes. And in the way she wrote about her Pa, it's obvious how much she loved him and the words were beautiful to read in their child-like worship of a larger-than-life father.
The editing wasn't very good for such a renowned publisher though; you encounter words such as 'loose' instead of 'lose' and 'bare' where 'bear' should be. While such basic errors did not discount the power of the storytelling, they did break the flow of the story, and called the editor's credibility to question.
Speaking of credibility, not really a fan of the 'imaginary' sections although I understand that it's comprehensible why the young Loung would have those images running through her mind.
The story itself is harrowing, but there were a few parts in which I got the sense of dramatization for its own sake. Coloured by a child's impression of a brutal experience, the narration in a nutshell tells me that rich city people are good and wise; the poor peasants are crass and cruel and are all on power trips. For all I know though, probably that's what really happened and that there really weren't any grey areas.
Not much was touched upon in terms of lessons learnt other than that in times of turmoil, it pays to be selfish and violent until the foreigners come to set everything straight; the baddies got punished, the lucky survivors got saved.
Still, this is a story that deserves to be read simply because of the scarcity of actual accounts in English from one of the bleakest implosions a nation could have experienced.
Despite the Animal Farm-esque brutality, it's still heartening how you could see Loung transform from a spoilt and pampered city girl into a strong, albeit still selfish, fighter with a fierce drive for survival. The restrained expressions of emotions didn't hide the love shared between the family members and some of the best moments in the book occur during such scenes. And in the way she wrote about her Pa, it's obvious how much she loved him and the words were beautiful to read in their child-like worship of a larger-than-life father.
The editing wasn't very good for such a renowned publisher though; you encounter words such as 'loose' instead of 'lose' and 'bare' where 'bear' should be. While such basic errors did not discount the power of the storytelling, they did break the flow of the story, and called the editor's credibility to question.
Speaking of credibility, not really a fan of the 'imaginary' sections although I understand that it's comprehensible why the young Loung would have those images running through her mind.
The story itself is harrowing, but there were a few parts in which I got the sense of dramatization for its own sake. Coloured by a child's impression of a brutal experience, the narration in a nutshell tells me that rich city people are good and wise; the poor peasants are crass and cruel and are all on power trips. For all I know though, probably that's what really happened and that there really weren't any grey areas.
Not much was touched upon in terms of lessons learnt other than that in times of turmoil, it pays to be selfish and violent until the foreigners come to set everything straight; the baddies got punished, the lucky survivors got saved.
Still, this is a story that deserves to be read simply because of the scarcity of actual accounts in English from one of the bleakest implosions a nation could have experienced.
March 10, 2008
I read this book in prepartion to our trip to Cambodia in April. I would have read it anyway, however, because I love depressing autobiographies. This one was far different than any other I have ever read being that it was from a child's perspective. It retold her unbelievable story of escaping the killing fields during Pol Pot's reign with the Khmer Rouge. I think everyone in my generation needs to read this book. Many people my age do not even know Pol Pot's name, moreless that he killed over 2 million people...in the 1970's none the less! Her story will make you appreciate even the simplest things in life.
June 13, 2013
This is a true survival story. The memoirs of Loung as she lived through the Khmer Roug take over of her country from 1975-1979 as a five year old girl with her parents and siblings are unbelievable. She ended up becoming an orphan as the soldiers murder her parents and two sisters during this horrible time in Cambodia. It is sometimes tough to read but her strength is truly amazing as she survives the worst time in her countrys history alone in a camp for child soldiers as Pol Pot reigns terror on all of Cambodia.
September 2, 2023
I was in Cambodia a few months ago. I wish I had read this book before. In any case, it's amazing how resilient human beings can be. It's an amazing country, people are happy despite being poor.
The book is tough, extremely tough. I had to read a different book before sleeping, otherwise I would have nightmares.
The book is tough, extremely tough. I had to read a different book before sleeping, otherwise I would have nightmares.
February 21, 2019
The soul shattering story of the Pol Pot decimation of Cambodia / Kampuchea from the viewpoint of a 5 year old girl through to when she was 9 years old! That more powerful as the story is recounted from the viewpoint of a child and that more devastating for the ordeals her and he family, her people underwent.
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It's not the best written book, but that is as much its power as it is meant to be a child's voice. The underlying strength, fortitude and pure doggedness of the survivors is remarkable, as is how their diaspora have mostly prospered. If you know little or nothing about the Cambodian Pol Pot regime, here's a place to start with a ground level view.. literally.
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Thank you Loung Ung for sharing your story, and all your amazing work campaigning against land mines. 9 out of 12.
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It's not the best written book, but that is as much its power as it is meant to be a child's voice. The underlying strength, fortitude and pure doggedness of the survivors is remarkable, as is how their diaspora have mostly prospered. If you know little or nothing about the Cambodian Pol Pot regime, here's a place to start with a ground level view.. literally.
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Thank you Loung Ung for sharing your story, and all your amazing work campaigning against land mines. 9 out of 12.
July 2, 2017
This book is so heartbreaking at so many levels, i cannot name them. words are useless.
I thought at one time at Susanne Collins' Hunger games. of course, there is no comparision, i dont even know why my mind came to that. that is pure stupid science fiction, written from somebody who never had to experience war and famine, Ung's book is pure stupid reality. If i hadn't had known this is a real story, a real person who lived through that, i would have easily said, it cannot be true. people cannot be so cruel to each other. unfortunately it is, that is why you can not compare people with animals. animals will never be so pointlessly cruel.
I thought at one time at Susanne Collins' Hunger games. of course, there is no comparision, i dont even know why my mind came to that. that is pure stupid science fiction, written from somebody who never had to experience war and famine, Ung's book is pure stupid reality. If i hadn't had known this is a real story, a real person who lived through that, i would have easily said, it cannot be true. people cannot be so cruel to each other. unfortunately it is, that is why you can not compare people with animals. animals will never be so pointlessly cruel.
August 29, 2018
It's hard to rate such a tragic story. Another country gone mad and a young girl lives through hunger, disease, lose of parents, political inanity, homelessness, hopelessness and war. This is a brutal written memoir of a brutal insane period in Cambodia.
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