The chilling story of the Cambodian purges led by the Kmer Rouge was impossible to put down. Ms. Ung tells her story without resorting to being overly violent even thogh the killings were in the millions. Her brilliance is in humanizing the violent struggle through a family we grow to care about deeply. She avoids the political side of the Cambodian civil war and focusses on an ordinary family turned from a happy middle class life to one of survival and loss. I read this in one day because I needed to know what happenned to this family. Poor little Loung Ung led a terrible few years but lives to remind us that our American lives of comfort are not to be taken for granted. I recently read a similar book on Rwanda and was similarly touched by how much suffering still can go on in our supposedly modern, humane world. Clearly, wanton slaughter in other countries makes me appreciate the simple freedoms of safety and security we have. Read this story and you will not complain about the simple things that aggravate us in America.

This is an excellent book of Ung's experiences in the Killing Fields of Cambodia, where she lived. The story is told by Loung Ung as an child, although filtered through an adult's eyes. The events occured when she was between 5 and 9 years old, but she tells it as though it is occuring during the present. This is a common literary device, but the fact remains that there is no way a child could accurately report the things that she saw to the extent that Ung does. Still, the book does bring home what the statistics about Pol Pot's reign can never do -- it shows the suffering caused on an individual level and the sufferings of someone who had no reason to be victimised. The book makes very painful reading as it brings one into the lives of one family that was basically destroyed by the madness of the Khmer Rouge. I would recommend this book to anyone if I thought that it would stop such atrocities from happening in the future, but then again, that is really not the way humans behave. A very sad commentary on the human race. Still, what is surprising is the ability not only of the author to survive emotionally but to actually thrive and to use her own experiences as an argument to get rid of mine warfare in the world. When we see the pictures of her family, we are left to wonder what might have been of 1/4 of Camboddia best and brightest had been allowed the right to life.

Every literate person in the world should read this book. The things that the author went through are almost unbelievable. I had only vaguely heard of the Khmer Rouge before I read this story, but the book told me all I need to know. Through the eyes of a six year old girl, readers are shown all the horrors of this terrifying period in Cambodian history.

The author started out as the happy upper-middle class child of a prominent government official. Then, one day the "Angkar" marched in and changed her life forever. Her family was forced to conceal their mixed Chinese-Cambodian blood, and the father's career in the government in order to keep their lives. They sent away to a forced labor camp, where they are starved and in constant fear for their lives. One by one, family members begin to die off, and the author is forced to go out on her own in order to survive. She and her surviving siblings are subjected to brainwashing, rape, starvation, and various other atrocities, but after many year of suffering, she finally manages to come out on top.

I am a senior in high school and I think it is outrageous that the Khmer Rouge has not even been mentioned in my history classes. Most people don't even know what the Khmer Rouge is. People need to hear about these things, and this book is the perfect way to do that. It makes you feel like the events are happening right outside your window. The author is an amazing person and her story will touch your heart.