I don’t even know where to begin with this book! This is easily the darkest and most emotional book I have ever read, but in a good way. I just can’t believe that all of the events in this book actually took place, and not even 50 years ago. It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did it was impossible to put down. The way Loung Ung describes everything that happened to her during these years is so mesmerizing. Loung went through so many traumatizing events through the duration of this book, and it really put into perspective on how we can take many things for granted these days and that tomorrow is never guaranteed. One thing I really liked about this book is that the author goes into such amazing detail about everything that happened to her. I could easily visualize everything that was taking place in my head just by using the imagery the author created. It should be noted that this book is definitely not for people who don’t like violence or similar mature topics, as this book is full of it. This is easily the best Biography/Memoir I have ever read, and I am very excited to watch the movie on Netflix!

Starting in 1975, after the end of the Vietnam War, Cambodia suffered an internal war that exhibited the most savage, bloody, horrible war crimes of modern times. “First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers” is the autobiography of a young girl who lived through this nightmare. Many of her family did not survive.

In 1975, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to Khmer Rouge forces led by Pol Pot. Loung Ung, the author, was a five year old girl at that time. She describes life in the city fondly. The streets were lined with noodle shops, small markets selling fresh food, shops selling all manner of goods from t-shirts to sunglasses to watches to jewelry. The streets were busy with people buying and selling goods, kids playing, people eating. It was a bustling and generally happy atmosphere.

That all changed overnight, literally. One day things were as described above, and the next day, as Pol Pot took control from the government, everyone was forced to leave the city and migrate to the country. They had to leave behind whatever they could not carry. Loung and her family walked for many days before arriving at a small village where they were assigned to live. Here they, along with millions of others throughout the country, were expected to work as slaves for the new regime.

It soon became clear that the Khmer Rouge were “cleansing” the population of all government workers and all non-ethnic Cambodians, anyone of mixed blood. Loung’s father had been a government worker, and her mother was partially Chinese, and they knew the Khmer Rouge would kill them if they were exposed. The family tried mightily for many months to conceal there origins, but their light skin and facial features could not be hidden.

Over the course of four years she loses every valuable possession, she learns to eat bugs and worms, her father is murdered, her sister dies of malnutrition, her brothers are forced to work in distant labor camps, she survives a rape attempt (at the age of 9!), her family starves and they are submitted to mind control and torture. Throughout the country, millions of people were starved to death and tortured to death. It was a waking nightmare.

After four years, the Khmer Rouge are ousted by the Vietnamese army. Eventually, she and one brother escape to Thailand, and from there they are accepted into the US.

In this review, I have glossed over many, many details and anecdotes. This is a fascinating account. The events described in the book are so brutal it is hard to comprehend. Many books of fiction have not come close to this level of violence and abuse. But, it is all real. I applaud the author for her ability to survive such an ordeal.

Her writing is highly readable. I encourage people to read this book. It is not only an account of brutality, but also of survival. It also provide us with a cautionary tale that illuminates how people can change from civilized to barbarian in a matter of hours and days. While reading this book, I tried to imagine this happening in the western world. This is proof that this can happen, and it can happen very quickly. We should not take our liberties and life styles for granted. One despot can destroy an entire society literally overnight. If you stop to think, we have had numerous cases in recent years. Think of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Hussein, Syria, Bosnia, etc. This did not occur in the distant past, and it is relevant to us today.

Kudos to Loung Ung for having the mental fortitude to relive this horror and share it with us. May we all hear what she has to say.

I was in Cambodia a few months ago. I wish I had read this book before. In any case, it's amazing how resilient human beings can be. It's an amazing country, people are happy despite being poor.
The book is tough, extremely tough. I had to read a different book before sleeping, otherwise I would have nightmares.

This was a horrific story of the terror and violence that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on the innocent people of Cambodia. Loung is the daughter of a high ranking government official, and the very type of family that the Khmer Rouge despise. The family tree to flee, pretending to be poor farmers, but are eventually imprisoned in a camp. The camp hardships and fear take their toll on the family and things get worse when they are all gradually separated into different camps, not knowing if they will ever see each other again, all individually struggling for survival.

I'm not going to spoil the book by saying anything about what happens in the camps or what happens to the characters. This is a book that you must read and uncover the horrors for yourself and I highly recommend this one to those who like these true life stories. I can't even begin to imagine how I would have coped in this situation and I really hope I never have to. If you thought the story An Ordinary Man-the Hotel Rwanda story was shocking then this one will really horrify you.

Vai ser bem difícil superar esse livro. Incrível incrível incrível!

O poveste tulburatoare, un roman scris cu inima, plin de durere si amaraciune, trist si autenic. Am ramas impresionata nu doar de poveste in sine, ci si de Loung Ung, aceasta copila care numai la cinci ani reuseste sa supravietuiasca iadului in care e aruncata. Recunosc ca nu stiam prea multe despre istoria Cambogiei, probabil si pentru ca am avut si noi, europenii, parte de suferintele noastre si parca ne raportam altfel la vecinii nostri decat la o tara exotica si indepartata. Insa si alti oameni au suferit, iar razboialele si nedreptatile nu au avut loc doar pe continentul nostru.
E greu sa vorbesti despre poveste si sa spui cat si ce ti-a placut, pentru ca de fapt nu e nimic de placut, e doar suferinta, e un roman care taie in carne vie si nu are cum sa nu iti ajunga la suflet. E o poveste despre familie si supravietuire, e mai mult decat simpla fictiune si merita sa ajunga la cat mai multi cititori.

I Would’ve never picked this book up on my own but OMG. Sooooooo heartbreaking. So informative.

I am ashamed to say I didn’t know too much about the Cambodian genocide before visiting Cambodia. After spending some time visiting the country and going to the killing fields and the prisons, as well as reading this book I have learned a great deal about Cambodia’s dark, tumultuous past.

This book was an extremely hard read as it details a young girls experience during Pol Pots regime which included lots of violence, suffering and trauma. The events discussed in this book are not for the faint of heart and may make you cry.

With that being said, I think it is an extremely important read in order to learn more about the atrocities that transpired in this beautiful country and the resilience of Cambodians. It made me incredibly grateful to be born in the country and time that I was born in.

2/6/08
Great book. This is the first book I've read by Loung Ung and so far I'm not a big fan of her writing style (it seems predictable and borrowed). But.. the book is excellent, mostly because it is a five-year-old's perspective on living and dying during Pol Pot's cleansing project in Cambodia. It's an interesting perspective because it is based on a mix of innocence, confusion, blind trust, fear, an innate need for self-preservation and the amazing ability that children have to sense and understand the world around them. It's probably one of the most difficult books I have ever read - I had to put it down several times because it was just too painful to read at times. As good as this book is, it is just as emotionally exhausting. I heard about the book while traveling through Vietnam recently, and ended up picking it up just outside of Angkor Thom in Cambodia a few weeks ago. In the book the author talks about some of her good memories from some of the places I visited, in particular Angkor Thom, so that was neat.

3/10/08
Just read this book again...even better the second time around.

Harrowing. I will not rate this, it doesn't feel right.

I thrifted this book a couple of weeks ago. When Kissinger died, I thought it was perfect timing to pick this up. Cambodia was one of his biggest sins. Even though it wasn't really mentioned in the book, one can't isolate the American bombing campaigns of the Cambodian-Northern Vietnamese border from the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

It tore at me that this was written from a child's perspective. Mere ink on paper could never adequately explain the violence that Loung witnessed and experienced. The killing started, and it didn't stop. I had to put it down a couple of times. And I have the absolute privilege to do so. Reading this reminded me of how minuscule my problems are.

This was beautifully written. But, it did not have to be. I do understand the pressure of just writing beautifully in hopes of being heard. Nevertheless, this was brilliant. Extremely vivid, it makes the unimaginable very imaginable.

I was so taken back by the fact that Loung's narration started in 1975, which was also when Saigon fell. Little did I understand what was going on in next door Cambodia.

This book is so commonplace at each and every bookshop, side alley, and tourist trap in Siem Reap, Cambodia. After the first three or four times the book was shoved in front of my face on my trip to Cambodia, I could no longer fetter my curiosity. (I purchased the book for 3$ USD but later found out at the duty free shops at Siem Reap Airport that the original costs around 15$ USD.)

Anyone travelling to Cambodia is most certainly not looking for a party. One goes there to salve that in-born need to experience the magical ancient history of the place; to behold the grand hindu temples built by the Khmer Civilization at the height of their power from 800-1432 AD, the most alluring of which is the magnificent temple-city of Angkor Wat. But lurking somewhere in the shadows is the more recent and foreboding history of Cambodia - the very horrific Pol Pot regime of 1975-79. If you should visit, you will not be able to deny this side of Cambodia.

If you don't want to pour over long historical articles in order to learn about what happened during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, then this book is for you. It details the life of the author from age 5 to 9 under the Khmer Rouge communist regime. At first I felt that the memories of a child that young could not possibly have been retained accurately but that confusion was solved in the book's first few pages, where the author acknowledges her brother Khuoy (who was 18 or so at the time) for providing her with accounts of their lives under the Khmer Rouge. Furthermore, towards the middle of the book, I came to realize that harsh experiences such as the author has had would have surely become ingrained in a child's mind and therefore indelible from memory. This thought lent more credibility to the author's recollected story.

Books such as this cannot be judged for their writing and prose and plot, for their purpose is different, and so I won't. I will say however that the pages flow fast and the English is simple. The story is simple true history; the author narrates the events of her difficult childhood in present tense, reliving her younger self's memories and successfully makes the whole reading experience very visceral and palpable. In this case this can be a bad thing since the very livid imagery of the pol-pot brutalities, the accounts of war and the struggle for survival with just a meal a day left me fighting back tears and that accompanying choking sensation.

It can be said for certain that this book is not for the faint of heart. And should you choose to read it, all assertions you may have of your insensitivity to violence or of your lack of empathy will be broken down and weeded out. I was depressed for the entire week or so that I was reading this book. Yet even as I was acutely aware of this change, I could not put the book down. (Perhaps the emotions I experienced reading this book were amplified/supplemented by the fact that I started it when I was in Cambodia. Perhaps, that made it all the more 'real' for me).

A riveting but harrowing account of a young Cambodian girl who's innocent idyllic childhood is swiftly obliterated by the invasion of the Khmer Rouge.

Loung at 5 years old and one of seven children shares her traumatic story of the 4 years spent under the terrifying Khmer Rouge reign trying to survive after her family are forced to flee their home in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh in 1975, it details all the devastating hardships from being forced to live in a labour camp, starvation, disease and learning to become a child soldier, and then navigating dangerous landmine terrain to reunite with her family. The story is relentless, the bravery of these kids having to endure hunger, being separated from parents and siblings watching some of her family being taken away only to be led to their death, it reminds you that no child should ever have to deal with the devastation of genocide, the loss of human life for political purposes is truly one of the hardest things to read about. The book reminds me how lucky I am to have been immune to such horrors in my lifetime but it's also equally important to hear these stories and learn about the true testament of the human spirit, the courage and the fight to live and survive is truly amazing. What an amazing account, and what a brave, strong and tenacious girl she was, many people died and weren't so lucky to escape.

I'm so glad Loung lived to share her tale and how she was able to find a purpose with her mission in life to educate and inform by becoming a human rights activist and also the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World.