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A review by sparksinthevoid
Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor
it is obviously very hard to read this - the casual and detached way in which ngor describes his torture and despair is as moving as it is frightening.
structurally, it was very smart to first include a picture of how cambodia looked like before the khmer rouge regime, and that it was a society that functioned on its own even if different from western societies. (however, i could have done without details of his love life, i really didn't know that he slept with his patients and cheated on his wife...)
roger warner's epilogue, while containing some interesting information about ngor's life that is not included in his part of the book, was condescending and wildly inappropriate. warner has no right to call ngor a 'difficult person' and someone who refuses to build a bridge between cambodia and the western world when ngor didn't owe him - and us - anything. participating in a movie and writing a book about the khmer rouge regime is not something that he needed to give us to strengthen our understanding and warner should understand that.
book 2 for my bearing witness: literature, memory, trauma module
structurally, it was very smart to first include a picture of how cambodia looked like before the khmer rouge regime, and that it was a society that functioned on its own even if different from western societies. (however, i could have done without details of his love life, i really didn't know that he slept with his patients and cheated on his wife...)
roger warner's epilogue, while containing some interesting information about ngor's life that is not included in his part of the book, was condescending and wildly inappropriate. warner has no right to call ngor a 'difficult person' and someone who refuses to build a bridge between cambodia and the western world when ngor didn't owe him - and us - anything. participating in a movie and writing a book about the khmer rouge regime is not something that he needed to give us to strengthen our understanding and warner should understand that.
book 2 for my bearing witness: literature, memory, trauma module