A review by skconaghan
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Written a mere 15 years after the ceasefire and final liberation of Cambodia, and only 9 years after the death of dictator Pol Pot, this account does not attempt to give an extensive historical exposition of the political regime that was the mortifying Khmer Rouge reign over an otherwise peaceful and prosperous people. It is the memoir of a small child, stumbling in the dark, losing freedom and family in a flash followed by a long agonising journey that robbed her of her childhood. It is not meant to be a literary work of genius. It is a child’s memoir of what should never be the memory of any child. It is heartbreaking. It is stark. It is honest. And it is at once a warning and a plea to the world that this never happen again, and yet… 

I spent some time in Cambodia among the generation who survived and the children who came after; this was hard going. Names and faces of friends who still suffer nightmares and the pain of loss had me listening bent over as I sobbed for what cannot be undone. I’ve heard similar accounts first hand from numerous others. And it is a repeated agony each time. But somehow, miraculously, there is hope in the hearts of the Khmer people; the thing always said, as they share their horrific truth of loss and destruction is: ‘we tell our truth so we won’t forget, so it won’t happen again’. 

And yet… look at the world. How is this still going on dressed in a different scarf, a different face…?

Thank you, Ms Loung Ung, for sharing your story with us, for us. May your heart continue to find healing.