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First They Killed My Father
Loung Ung
Memoir, 2000
A child's memoir of Phnom Penh's evacuation and Khmer Rouge labour camps in the countryside, 1975–79.
Books set in Cambodia
Six books by writers from Cambodia, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with First They Killed My Father and In the Shadow of the Banyan.
About the literature of Cambodia
Cambodia's national epic is the Reamker, the Khmer version of the Indian Ramayana, retold for centuries in verse, dance and temple painting. Stories like this were performed and passed on aloud long before the modern novel. The Khmer Rouge years of 1975 to 1979 shape most Cambodian writing now best known abroad, much of it survivor memoir in English or French.
Vann Nath's A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21, translated from Khmer, is a painter's account of surviving Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh by painting portraits of Pol Pot. Pin Yathay's Stay Alive, My Son recounts an engineer's escape to Thailand after the 1975 evacuation. Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father is told through a child's eyes, while Vaddey Ratner's novel In the Shadow of the Banyan traces a royal family's fall, with poetry and village life throughout.
By writers from Cambodia
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In the Shadow of the Banyan
Vaddey Ratner
Novel, 2012
A novel of a royal family's fall in Khmer Rouge Cambodia, with Buddhist tradition, poetry and village life throughout.
When Broken Glass Floats
Chanrithy Him
Memoir, 2000
A memoir of growing up in rural Cambodia and surviving the Khmer Rouge years of forced labour and famine.
Stay Alive, My Son
Pin Yathay
Memoir, 1980. Translated from French
An engineer's memoir of the 1975 evacuation, starvation in the work camps, and his escape to Thailand.
Survival in the Killing Fields
Haing Ngor
Memoir, 1987
A Phnom Penh doctor's account of pre-war city life, Khmer Rouge persecution and the flight to the border.
A Cambodian Prison Portrait: One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21
Vann Nath
Memoir, 1998. Translated from Khmer by Moeun Chhean Nariddh
A painter's account of surviving Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh by painting portraits of Pol Pot.
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