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dei2dei's review against another edition
3.0
I thought I'd marked this as read, but apparently not...
stephanieluxton's review
5.0
This is probably the saddest book I've ever read. It absolutely broke my heart that one person could endure so much mental and physical anguish. This book is brilliantly written in a way that feels immersive. If you haven't read historical non-fiction before, this is an amazing introduction to the genre. Everyone should read it so we can make sure nothing like this can ever happen again. It's scary stuff.
liter_amy's review against another edition
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75
A dark and terrifying read. The horrors that the Khmer people went through during the Khmer Rouge are something that the survivors are still trying to overcome and trying to rebuild their country from the massacre. Being a first-generation Cambodian-American, it was extremely hard to get through, knowing that my family members experienced these hardships and managed to flee the country. It's a heavy, graphic book but it is the history of Cambodia that is rarely discussed in school during history which makes it all the more important to read. The only reason I am giving it a 4.75 rating instead of a 5/5 is because of the graphic details and I am not sure if I would ever be ready to pick this book up again to re-read.
romiress's review against another edition
5.0
This book was both amazing and soul crushingly saddening. It took me weeks to read, which is unusual for me, simply because I had to stop reading in order to recover mentally. Haing Ngor goes through hell and back, and only then he tells you 'you should skip this if you're of the faint of heart'. He's not kidding either. It's horrifying what comes next, and he does it not once but three separate times. It's not the sort of book I'm going to forget for a long, long time.
vulpex's review against another edition
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
This book was a much more interesting read than I expected it to be. Every person you meet throughout his life, you make a connection with. I bought this book because I honestly didn't know much about the Cambodian genocide, only that there were tours of the killing fields. Safe to say, I am now a bit more enlightened. This book gives an interesting look into Cambodian culture before the decimation of the country. I gave this book a 4.75 simply because there are so many terms that you must remember. This book changed how I viewed myself - Haing described himself as emotional and hot-headed, the first to come and last to leave. How he viewed himself, his wife, his friends, and enemies throughout the genocide was incredibly thought-provoking.
In some of the more graphic chapters, the author gives a warning to skip. I don't think this book was especially graphic or unsavory, given the story.
The fact that Haing was murdered over not giving up his wifes locket left me speechless, but given his character, I was not surprised. May he rest with Huoy forever.
In some of the more graphic chapters, the author gives a warning to skip. I don't think this book was especially graphic or unsavory, given the story.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Grief, Infertility, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Racism, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Vomit, Violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Excrement
Minor: Pedophilia, Cannibalism, and Child abuse
Towards the end of this book is whenschlindsay's review against another edition
5.0
Emotionally, this was a tough read. But it was very good and hard to put down.
harryr's review against another edition
4.0
Survival in the Killing Fields is my book from Cambodia for the Read The World challenge. Haing Ngor was a doctor in pre-revolutionary Phnom Penh. That alone was enough to make him a target for the Khmer Rouge, but he managed to survive their regime through lies, determination, judgement and blind luck. Later he made it to America, was cast in the film The Killing Fields, and won an Oscar for best supporting actor.
Which is a remarkable story, and superficially one of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity; except that really, even an Academy Award is no kind of compensation for forced labour, torture, exile, and the death of most of your family. And in the Epilogue written for this edition, 15 years after the original publication, we learn that Ngor had a pretty rough time of it in the US — which I guess you have to say is not surprising, given all he'd been through, that he was living as a refugee with limited English, and that frankly he seems to have been a somewhat difficult man even before the psychological scarring of the Khmer Rouge years. The final tragic twist is that he was shot dead outside his home in Los Angeles in what was probably but not definitely a normal, non-political robbery.
So it's a dark book. It would be difficult to read except that the matter-of-fact way that it's told keeps it from being as harrowing as it might be.
In some ways I would have liked to read a non-Khmer Rouge book for Cambodia, because it seems a pity to always see these countries through the lens of their most spectacular historical traumas. But I'm glad I read this, even so. In some ways all these political atrocities start to blur together, all endless variations on a theme — torture, paranoia, propaganda, casual violence — but somehow they all have their own distinctive local flavour. The Khmer Rouge see to have been characterised by a particularly nasty combination of anti-intellectualism, viciousness and incompetence.
Which is a remarkable story, and superficially one of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity; except that really, even an Academy Award is no kind of compensation for forced labour, torture, exile, and the death of most of your family. And in the Epilogue written for this edition, 15 years after the original publication, we learn that Ngor had a pretty rough time of it in the US — which I guess you have to say is not surprising, given all he'd been through, that he was living as a refugee with limited English, and that frankly he seems to have been a somewhat difficult man even before the psychological scarring of the Khmer Rouge years. The final tragic twist is that he was shot dead outside his home in Los Angeles in what was probably but not definitely a normal, non-political robbery.
So it's a dark book. It would be difficult to read except that the matter-of-fact way that it's told keeps it from being as harrowing as it might be.
In some ways I would have liked to read a non-Khmer Rouge book for Cambodia, because it seems a pity to always see these countries through the lens of their most spectacular historical traumas. But I'm glad I read this, even so. In some ways all these political atrocities start to blur together, all endless variations on a theme — torture, paranoia, propaganda, casual violence — but somehow they all have their own distinctive local flavour. The Khmer Rouge see to have been characterised by a particularly nasty combination of anti-intellectualism, viciousness and incompetence.
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