Reading Recommendations

Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land

by Joel Brinkley
A generation after the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia shows every sign of having overcome its history–the streets of Phnom Penh are paved; skyscrapers dot the skyline. But under this façade lies a country still haunted by its years of terror.

Joel Brinkley won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Cambodia on the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed one quarter of the nation’s population during its years in power. In 1992, the world came together to help pull the small nation out of the mire. Cambodia became a United Nations protectorate–the first and only time the UN tried something so ambitious. What did the new, democratically-elected government do with this unprecedented gift?

In 2008 and 2009, Brinkley returned to Cambodia to find out. He discovered a population in the grip of a venal government. He learned that one-third to one-half of Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era have P.T.S.D.–and its afflictions are being passed to the next generation. His extensive close-up reporting in Cambodia’s Curse illuminates the country, its people, and the deep historical roots of its modern-day behavior.

In the Shadow of the Banyan: A Novel

by Vaddey Ratner

This book is a PEN Hemingway Award finalist “rich with history, mythology, folklore, language and emotion.” It will take you to the very depths of despair and show you unspeakable horrors. It will reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive through a furtive bow, a hidden ankle bracelet, fragments of remembered poetry. It will ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Cambodian killing fields between 1975 and 1979, when an estimated two million people lost their lives. It will give you hope, and it will confirm the power of storytelling to lift us up and help us not only survive but transcend suffering, cruelty, and loss.

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours, bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as the Khmer Rouge attempts to strip the population of every shred of individual identity, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of her childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

by Loung Ung

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.

Hun Sen’s Cambodia

by Sebastian Strangio

A fascinating analysis of the recent history of the beautiful but troubled Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia.

To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s. Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval.

In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN’s first great post–Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the nation has slipped steadily backward into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling study, the first of its kind, Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen’s leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past.

The Rent Collector

by Camron Wright

Survival for Ki Lim and Sang Ly is a daily battle at Stung Meanchey, the largest municipal waste dump in all of Cambodia. They make their living scavenging recyclables from the trash. Life would be hard enough without the worry for their chronically ill child, Nisay, and the added expense of medicines that are not working. Just when things seem worst, Sang Ly learns a secret about the ill-tempered rent collector who comes demanding money–a secret that sets in motion a tide that will change the life of everyone it sweeps past.

The Rent Collector is a story of hope, of one womans journey to save her son and another womans chance at redemption. It demonstrates that even in a dump in Cambodia–perhaps especially in a dump in Cambodia–everyone deserves a second chance.

When The War Was Over: Cambodia And The Khmer Rouge Revolution

by Elizabeth Becker

Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for The Washington Post, when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border and a systematic reorganization of Cambodian society. Everyone was sent from the towns and cities to the countryside, where they were forced to labor endlessly in the fields. The intelligentsia were brutally exterminated, and torture, terror, and death became routine. Ultimately, almost two million people—nearly a quarter of the population—were killed in what was one of this century’s worst crimes against humanity.

When the War Was Over is Elizabeth Becker’s masterful account of the Cambodian nightmare. Encompassing the era of French colonialism and the revival of Cambodian nationalism; 1950s Paris, where Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot received his political education; the killing fields of Cambodia; government chambers in Washington, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Hanoi, and Phnom Penh; and the death of Pol Pot in 1998; this is a book of epic vision and staggering power. Merging original historical research with the many voices of those who lived through the times and exclusive interviews with every Cambodian leader of the past quarter century, When the War Was Over illuminates the darkness of Cambodia with the intensity of a bolt of lightning.

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge

by Chanrithy Him

Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way “worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child.”

In the Cambodian proverb, “when broken glass floats” is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the “killing fields.” In a mesmerizing story, Him vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and technology, such as cars and electricity, no longer exists. Death becomes a companion at the camps, along with illness.

Yet through the terror, Chanrithy’s family remains loyal to one another despite the Khmer Rouge’s demand of loyalty only to itself. Moments of inexpressible sacrifice and love lead them to bring what little food they have to the others, even at the risk of their own lives. In 1979, “broken glass” finally sinks. From a family of twelve, only five of the Him children survive. Sponsored by an uncle in Oregon, they begin their new lives in a land that promises welcome to those starved for freedom. 15 black and white illustrations

Soul Survivors – Stories of Women and Children in Cambodia

by Bhavia C. Wagner
Soul Survivors gives voice to women and children in Cambodia who survived the genocide (1975 – 1979), when nearly two million people died from execution, starvation, or disease. Through their detailed personal stories, fourteen people reveal the brutality of Pol Pot’s regime, how they managed to survive, and what it took to rebuild their lives afterward.

Although the survivors lives are fraught with suffering and times of despair, there is an under current of hope, courage, and resilience that comforts and inspires. Their stories are a testimony to the strength and goodness of the human spirit.

Twelve of the fourteen survivors who tell their stories in Soul Survivors stayed in Cambodia after the genocide and worked against the odds to bring their family fragments back together and reclaim their culture. The fascinating details about life and traditions in Cambodia are revealed through their tales as the survivors come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including a medical doctor, classical dancer, landmine survivor, Buddhist nun, Muslim fisherwoman, Christian farmer, orphan, high school teacher, prostitute, silk weaver, social worker, and women’s leader.

This second edition of Soul Survivors was published as Cambodia’s genocide trial began in 2008. The perpetrators, top leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, are being held accountable for mass murder and crimes against humanity 30 years after the tragedy.

This new edition is updated and contains recent historical events and an epilog telling what happened to the survivors since the first edition was published in 2002.

Survival in the Killing Fields

by Haing Ngor & Roger Warner

Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That’s who I am,” says Haing Ngor. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge. Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. Like Pran, too, Ngor was a doctor by profession, and he experienced firsthand his country’s wretched descent, under the Khmer Rouge, into senseless brutality, slavery, squalor, starvation, and disease—all of which are recounted in sometimes unimaginable horror in Ngor’s poignant memoir.

Since the original publication of this searing personal chronicle, Haing Ngor’s life has ended with his murder, which has never been satisfactorily solved. In an epilogue written especially for this new edition, Ngor’s coauthor, Roger Warner, offers a glimpse into this complex, enigmatic man’s last years—years that he lived “like his country: scarred, and incapable of fully healing.”

Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia

by William Shawcross

Although there are many books and films dealing with the Vietnam War, Sideshow tells the truth about America’s secret and illegal war with Cambodia from 1969 to 1973. William Shawcross interviewed hundreds of people of all nationalities, including cabinet ministers, military men, and civil servants, and extensively researched U.S. Government documents.

This full-scale investigation―with material new to this edition―exposes how Kissinger and Nixon treated Cambodia as a sideshow. Although the president and his assistant claimed that a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia was necessary to eliminate North Vietnamese soldiers who were attacking American troops across the border, Shawcross maintains that the bombings only spread the conflict, but led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and the subsequent massacre of a third of Cambodia’s population.

Carrying Cambodia by Hans Kemp

Unbelievable feats of transportation are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Cambodia. Tuk-tuks, cyclos, cars, trucks, motorbikes and bicycles transport loads that defy your wildest imagination. Tuk-tuks crammed to the roof with fruit and veg, beaten-up old taxis transporting pigs bigger than people, beds bigger than pigs and water tanks bigger than beds! Six people on one small motorbike, and sixty-seven people standing on the back of a flatbed lorry.

Photographers Hans Kemp and Conor Wall spent hundreds of long, painful hours on the back of motorbikes documenting this unique street culture, resulting in this amazing book loaded with incredible photographs that will forever change your definition of “packed!”

Earth in Flower – The Divine Mystery of the Cambodian Dance Drama

by Paul Cravath & Kent Davis

An extraordinary account of Southeast Asia’s most esoteric female performing art: the ancient Cambodian ballet. Since the dawn of recorded history, Khmer royalty nurtured a spiritual dance unique to their kingdom. Today, people worldwide instantly recognize the style, mistakenly associating it with Siam and Thailand. In fact, the Siamese captured the mystical dancers and their secrets upon conquering the Khmers in the 15th Century.

In 1975, another wartime twist of fate gave University of Hawaii researcher Paul Cravath rare access to the formerly sequestered troupe of royal dancers, their teachers, theater and archives. The author thoroughly covers the topics of choreography, musicology, costuming and stagecraft. More surprising is learning how profoundly these women affected regional history for a millennium, as goddesses, priestesses, queens, concubines, hostages and diplomats. Earth in Flower gives new insights into this beautiful art, its dancers and how their rituals balance the Khmer relationship between heaven and earth.

A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival

by John Tully

In this concise and compelling history, Cambodia’s past is described in vivid detail, from the richness of the Angkorean empire through the dark ages of the 18th and early-19th centuries, French colonialism, independence, the Vietnamese conflict, the Pol Pot regime, and its current incarnation as a troubled democracy.

With energetic writing and passion for the subject, John Tully covers the full sweep of Cambodian history, explaining why this land of contrasts remains an interesting enigma to the international community. Detailing the depressing record of war, famine, and invasion that has threatened to destroy Cambodia, this discussion shows its survival to be a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Angkor & the Khmer Civilization

by Michael D. Coe

The classic-period Khmer kings ruled over their part-Hindu and part-Buddhist empire from AD 802 for more than five centuries. This period saw the construction of many architectural masterpieces, including the huge capital city of Angkor, with the awe-inspiring Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious structure. Numerous other provincial centers, bound together by an impressive imperial road system, were scattered across the Cambodian Plain, northeast Thailand, southern Laos, and the Delta of southern Vietnam. Khmer civilization by no means disappeared with the gradual abandonment of Angkor that began in the fourteenth century, and the book’s final chapter describes the conversion of the Khmer to a different kind of Buddhism, the move of the capital downriver to the Phnom Penh area, and the reorientation of the Khmer state to maritime trade.

Angkor and the Khmer Civilization presents a concise but complete picture of Khmer cultural history from the Stone Age until the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1863, and is lavishly illustrated with maps, plans, drawings, and photographs. Drawing on the latest archaeological research, Michael D. Coe brings to life Angkor’s extraordinary society and culture. 130 illustrations, 22 in color.

Cambodia, Orphan Tourism and Me

by Ron Hawkins

This is the first book written from the viewpoint and experiences of an ‘orphanage tourist’. Framed by my time working at a HIV orphanage, I look at the dangers of the current fad of orphanage tourism and the creation of an orphan culture which is being supported by orphanage tourism.

Cambodia has never recovered from the murderous Khmer Rouge years. I review the wider problems within Cambodian society which are perpetuating the break down of an already torn social fabric: forced evictions, the impact of sex trafficking, the current state of the Kingdom under a dictatorship, violent crime and the ongoing exploitation of women and children. I also detour into Indonesian ghost movies, Buddhist ceremonies, and my own absurd and probably dangerous predicament. If you are interested in Cambodia, thinking about some kind of orphanage tourism, or wishing to travel in Cambodia, this book will give you a perspective you won’t get in the travel guides.

Cambodian Cooking, Southeast Asian-Style Recipes

by Kelly Chan

All of Cambodia’s robust flavors, fresh ingredients, and inventive dishes are right at your fingertips. Whether you’re a new cook just learning the ropes or a seasoned pro, Chan’s helpful hints and time saving shortcuts make cooking Asian style meals easier than ever.

From stir fried rice noodles with chicken to a peanut vinaigrette lime sauce that can be used on virtually everything, Cambodian Cooking: South East Asian Styleis a delicious way to explore your world.

All of the recipes in Chan’s inventive cookbook are grouped together by ingredients. This means you won’t have to buy dozens of different items that can only be used for one dish, guaranteeing that you’ll never waste food—or fridge space—again.

While all the ingredients are easily available at your nearest Asian grocery store, each recipe welcomes substitutions to conform to your own family’s specific dietary needs.

Discover how to create flavorful soups, appetizers, mains, and more in a fresh new cookbook that is sure to become a classic.