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A review by shanehawk
Ghosts in the Forest by Corinne Purtill
4.0
Compelling, poignant, laconic.
Indochina is a region I lack knowledge in historically and once I found out this story’s subject I delved right in. Purtill gives an engrossing overview of what these 34 people endured before, during, and after the reign of the Khmer Rouge. With the help of a translator, we get conversations right from the source. The author packed a mighty punch in under a hundred pages.
The reader receives a well-rounded education on these people who re-entered the world after being in a forest for most of their lives avoiding the terrors of war under the Khmer Rouge communists. Little did they know, when they came out of the forest in 2004 the war in the Indochina Peninsula had ended 25 years prior. It was intriguing reading how little they knew of the modern world. In a way they had traveled time.
It is free on Amazon Kindle and I recommend this short read to anyone remotely interested.
I’ll leave you with a couple quotes:
Indochina is a region I lack knowledge in historically and once I found out this story’s subject I delved right in. Purtill gives an engrossing overview of what these 34 people endured before, during, and after the reign of the Khmer Rouge. With the help of a translator, we get conversations right from the source. The author packed a mighty punch in under a hundred pages.
The reader receives a well-rounded education on these people who re-entered the world after being in a forest for most of their lives avoiding the terrors of war under the Khmer Rouge communists. Little did they know, when they came out of the forest in 2004 the war in the Indochina Peninsula had ended 25 years prior. It was intriguing reading how little they knew of the modern world. In a way they had traveled time.
It is free on Amazon Kindle and I recommend this short read to anyone remotely interested.
I’ll leave you with a couple quotes:
“The Khmer Rouge offered only one way to live, yet now, as their failed state disintegrated, there were endless ways to die.”
“Highlander people I spoke to regularly counted the absence of salt alongside death and bombing as the worst of their sufferings under Pol Pot.”