In the Shadow of the Banyan
by Vaddey Ratner
A Cambodian princess. The Khmer Rouge. Her father's stories keep her alive.
For you if
you want to understand the Khmer Rouge through a novel that refuses to let brutality be the only thing it contains
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Raami is seven years old, the daughter of a Cambodian prince, when the Khmer Rouge takes Phnom Penh. Her father — a poet — tells her stories to help her survive what is happening. Ratner bases this novel on her own childhood and her father's actual death. What distinguishes it from other Khmer Rouge accounts is the language — lyrical, rooted in Cambodian mythology and poetry — which becomes its own form of resistance. A dispatch about how beauty and story survive inside atrocity, and what they cost to maintain.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Cambodia • Southeast Asia
- Voice
- Written by a Cambodian author
- Topics
- khmer rouge
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