Khmer history

Sometimes I love reading memoirs etc of Khmer history, but other times I can't stand it when I've reached "horror saturation". Recently I got interested again in these books, see links below. I'm still thinking about the last one I read in Jan 2022. The Girl Who Said Goodbye written by Heather Allen

In high school, I learnt about Pol Pot time (1975-1979 in Cambodia), a very dark time. And then at Bible college, I met someone born during that time, which I found fascinating because according to what I learnt at school people were dying during that time, not being born. He went the opposite way! Anyway, 18 years later he is still fascinating and there are still more Khmer Rouge stories for me to read.

And youtube links too...

Mainly so I can remember what I've read and watched I'm collecting it all here. There are also lots of books I've read the free download sample from Amazon, hope to read the whole book one day.

John Pilger's Year Zero. It is interesting for me to see him walking around in Phnom Penh right at that point after it had been empty for almost 4 years. It would be another decade before it really opened up to the world, so seeing the situation right at the point when the Khmer Rouge regime ended.

War Hotels:

A haven from the civil war, Cambodia’s Hotel Le Phnom 

I lived near this hotel in my first year in Cambodia. And it also comes up in reading about those bizarre days just before Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. So I enjoyed watching a documentary focused on it and the journalist who stayed there. 

When the Clouds Fell from the Sky: A Daughter's Search for Her Father in the Killing Fields of Cambodia 

by Robert Carmichael (Author) 

I think this is the first time for me to read a story about an overseas Khmer who went back into Cambodia in the late 1970s. I'd read about it but this is a story from his family across decades, and with Duch's trial woven into the story. 

A Blessing over Ashes: The Remarkable Odyssey of My Unlikely Brother 

by Adam Fifield (Author)

So this one was not only a memoir of a survivor's time in Cambodia but it followed him all the way to his childhood in America and then adult life as he went back to visit Cambodia. (I feel like most books I've read are all based in the late 70s in Cambodia and then end when they are happily settled in the USA decades later, this one fills in the in-between bit.) 

In the Shadow of the Banyan: A Novel 

by Vaddey Ratner (Author) 

Although a novel the author was a similar age to the main character, a child living in Phnom Penh in 1975. I actually thought it was a memoir when I started reading it. It follows her family out of the city that April and through all the changes that happened next. I love her descriptions of Cambodia. Its interesting as she is Khmer herself but writing in English after growing up in America. I usually hear from Khmer ppl who live here their own descriptions of things OR I hear from expats who live here, so this is a new perspective. 

Bamboo and Barbed Wire  Margot Grant (Author)

Like the overseas Khmer of 1970s, which I had read about but didn't know of their experience, this was written about life in a camp in the 1980s. I've heard so much about the refugee/DP camps but this was the first time to read a real life story.  Memoirs and historical fiction help you feel like you actually visited and met people, more vivid that just knowing the facts. 

And there is another book in the works by Abigail Follows. 

"It’s the true story of a man who miraculously survived a genocide by calling on a God he did not know—and then met that God in a refugee camp. Great Unsearchable Things is the story of Sovath Sim, the father of a missionary friend of mine. His survival story is a beautiful testament to God’s grace in difficult times and the power of family love–both of which were outlawed during Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. His story also gives some insight into the Buddhist mindset and response to Jesus. I hope to complete the first draft by Spring, 2024."