Read this review on my blog: https://thriftybibliophile.com/2018/0...

In the harrowing book First They Killed My Father, Loung Ung recounts her time under the war regime of Pol Pot. Despite the civil war, genocide, and starvation, Loung Ung refuses to be cowed into submission. Because of her passionate spirit and a desperate drive to keep living, Loung survives.

This book was beautifully written, though the details are horrifying and very reminiscent of a Holocaust survivor's memoir. The atrocious acts Loung Ung endures are heartbreaking. It's so hard to come to terms with the fact that people do such horrible things to other people.

The pace of the book is swift. The book opens in Phnom Penh, where Loung lived a life of leisure and privilege as the daughter of a high-ranking government officer. Where some families lived in little more than shacks, Loung's family had an apartment with a maid. As the war takes a turn for the worse, Loung's life is turned upside down. The events unfold quickly, and they're easy to follow as the family moves from one place to the next.

I enjoyed this book as much as one can say they enjoy this sort of book. It was riveting but also desperately sad. I felt completely immersed in Loung's world and it was painful as she was separated from her family and friends. The book doesn't hold back as it covers all of the nitty gritty details of starvation and prisoner abuse.

The narrator in this audiobook was wonderful. She was engaging and emotional in all the right places. Her voice was able to capture the innocence of a child perfectly. I enjoyed listening to her weave Loung Ung's tale.

If you're looking for a memoir to read, this one is well worth the read. If you're sensitive to stories of abuse and acts of war, then be wary before picking up this book.

I feel bad I didn't love this book--maybe I've been jaded by too many tales of misery and atrocity. Or maybe it's just reading this so soon after Egger's What is the What about Sudan or for that matter after Vaddey's The Shadow of the Banyan, also about this period, this book has a lot to live up to. I admit I'm someone who finds it hard to just go with the flow of the practice of memoirs written with the immediacy of a novel. I just don't find it credible--especially in this case where it's written from the point of view of a very young child narrator. Ung was only five years old when the Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated her city of Phenom Pehn, less than eight when she was trained to be a soldier. The book is also written in the very literary fiction present tense, with events she didn't experience but could only imagine told through the gauze of italics. I wished at times she had told the story straight--it doesn't need to be tarted up. Or that like Vaddey or Eggers, she had written this as a novel, and not claimed this as memoir.

Interestingly, Ung addresses some of these issues in her afterward about writing the book. She says she takes offense at those who feel someone so young would not remember--wouldn't even feel the trauma. She wanted to give voice to a child going through such experiences. She also defended the use of present tense. She said she originally tried to write this in the past tense, but felt that "by writing in the past tense" she was protecting herself. That she needed that immediacy. But I actually think present tense--unless handled very, very skillfully--attracts attention to itself, and so can be more distancing than the past tense.

That said, this did give a day to day sense of life under the Khmer Rouge I didn't get either from the film The Killing Fields nor Veddey's novel In the Shadow of the Banyan. Part of that is because being partly Chinese, Ung experienced racism and had to hide her background, even her skin color, to avoid "ethnic cleansing"--giving her a different perspective than I've heard in other stories of this period. She spoke of the favor given to "Base People"--those native Khmer from the countryside who had been there for generations, as opposed to the "new people" driven there from the cities. And she certainly gave a vivid, harrowing account of hunger--from the physical effects to what it drives you to. Despite my criticism, this is definitely a remarkable story of survival.

Excellent memoir from a horrific period of time in Cambodia. Angelina Jolie made this into a movie.

Loung Ung is now a national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World, a program of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. In this book, she tells of her story of escape from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. In just a matter of a few years, the Cambodian communists managed to kill off about three million of their own people by either direct or indirect means. Ung was five years old when the story began. Her father was a government official. The entire city of Phnom Penh was forcibly driven out. And that includes every hospital patient, every old and young person. The Angkars as they called themselves hated anyone who was educated, urban, western. Those people, if they could be found, would be killed often immediately.

Comecei a ler esse livro por fazer parte da lista de livros recomendados pela escola da minha filha. E uma historia dolorosa em que a autora conta a sua vida no Cambodia durante a ditadura de Pol Pot.
A autora narra a sua vida e sobrevivencia durante a guerra ea vida como refugiada. E uma leitura muito triste, mas e um tema que infelizmente nao deixa de ser atual, pois no mundo mais de 120 milhões de pessoas foram forçadas a abandonar as suas casas devido a conflitos e violência.

A terrible history of war crimes & ideology gone mad

4,5. Vaya viaje más intenso. Siempre que empiezo un libro que nos habla sobre la historia real de, en este caso, la propia autora, me da algo de miedo. Principalmente porque, aunque normalmente satisfactorio, suele ser un viaje muy duro. Y es el caso de esta historia.

Nos encontramos en Camboya con una familia de clase media compuesta por una madre, un padre y siete hijos. Éstos acomodados en las privilegios de pertenecer a una clase social más alta, verán como su mundo se derrumba con la toma de posesión de los Jemeres rojos y su líder Pol Pot. Guerra, torturas, muertes, violaciones... Una guerra horrible, que resuena más aún al saber que fue cierta.

Me ha resultado muy interesante descubrir que la revolución cultural China no fue algo que ocurriera solo en allí. Aunque con otro nombre también ocurrió algo similar en Vietnam, y lo mismo ocurrió en Camboya con los Jemeres rojos. Y a saber en cuantos sitios más. Lo curiosos de esta guerra es que lo líderes usaron la ingorancia y cultura de la gente de pueblo para iniciar una guerra contra la cultura y el conocimiento, y las personas que los poseían. En este mundo en guerra tener posesiones o tener una profesión diferente de la que implica la vida en el campo, era considerado demoniaco y en contra del líder Pol Pot y de Camboya. Y, por tanto, implicaba la muerte.

En definitiva, un libro muy duro, muy intenso. No para todos los estómagos. Pero que sin embargo tiene un halo esperanzador a causa de Loung Ung, que nos narra la historia en primera persona. Tuvo que convertirse en una mujer fuerte y poderosa con tan solo 5 años. Increíble viaje.

“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it. ”

After Ana Frank's diary, this is the most emotional memoir (of course this is not a diary, everything written afterward) but these two books have a lot in common. In this memoir, Loung Ung gave us a truly inspiring very young girl and a strong family bond through all the bad times, once again to hope for everlasting humanity against all the odds.

There was only few hours of difference to change entire life of middle-class privileged family into a living hell, and of course everyone's life. Hard to grasp, beyond imagination, how easy things fall apart is scary. Above all, it's totally astonishing how children that never prepared for anything close to this, learn to survive fast and hold on to each other, losing their parents and two of their siblings.

What happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 (A huge massacre that killed a quarter of the country) written and narrated in different ways, but still this book gave another dimension to look at it. Things you cannot get from history books. If we all need to learn the severe outcome of war and the unbearable ugliness in it, we need such memoir from such victims.

تحكي أونج قصة نجاتها من جريمة إبادة جماعية، وهي بعد طفلة في الخامسة من العمر عندما بدأت مأساتها.

الجوع حقيقي في هذه الرواية، ومؤلم جدا؛ له مخالب تبطش، وأسلحة تفتك بالأجساد، وتعبث بالأرواح.

الجرائم التي تحدث حين تطلق يد الجنود أو الميليشيات من غير قيود مرعبة، وهذه الفواجع تتكرر على مر التاريخ. ليتني أستطيع القول أن الإنسانية تقدمت الان بحيث أصبحنا بمنأى عنها.
أفلحت أونج في توصيل معاناة النازحين في الإبادات الجماعية وكوارث الحروب من خلال سردها للنزوح المتكرر لها وعائلتها.

الراوية تتكلم عن تجربتها من وجهة نظرها كطفلة، ورغم أن حكم الخمير الحمر لم يمتد طويلا، إلا أن الأربع سنوات التي حكمت فيها جماعة الخمير الحمر كمبوديا كانت ذات نتائج كارثية على أونج وعائلتها بالإضافة إلى مليونين من الضحايا الذين لقوا حتفهم.
لا تتحدث الراوية عن الدوافع السياسية، وتدعنا نتخبط معها في فهم الدوافع لتفلح تماما في أن ترينا المأساة من عيون طفلة مشتتة، وخائفة، وساذجة، وفي أحيان كثيرة مقاومة وبشدة.
قوة الروابط العائلية، والحب، والكره، والاستغلال، والقتل، واليأس والأمل، والفراق واللقاء، والبحر والبر، والحضارة والهمجية، والجمال والقبح، لكل هذا وأكثر كان له نصيب في هذا الكتاب الصادم والهام.

This is the autobiography of a little girl's survival in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge took over. To survive, her family did what they had to in order to survive. It was tragic when some decided that it would be easier to just die. Going from a privileged life to that of starving farmers, they soon discovered what they needed to do, even the littlest of children. So much tragedy and not of all her family made it through to the end (as the title says).

I liked the way the author addressed the horror of the time. Even as horrific as it was, it was filtered through the eyes of a child. Overall, I liked this one so 3 stars.

Being a Cambodian, I have heard, read and watched endless stories about the Khmer Rouge from various sources. I have to admit that I actually didn't expect much from the book at first because I thought maybe it was just another book describing about how one and her family had suffered during the Khmer Rouge just like the rest. But no. Hell no! I was dead wrong.

This story from a 5-year-old girl's perspective can still make wrench my heart despite me already familiar with most of the situations the character was going through since that's what my mom, dad, uncle, aunt, grandparents and other older relatives had gone through as well: losing family members, being constantly hungry, craving for love and sanitation, and being forced to work.

I think the book's well written, mirroring all the small details the girl noticed and felt such as the curiosity and doubt she kept questioning herself and everything around her during the regime, and her dreams/nightmares. The part that made me cry is when the little Loung tried to create scenes in her mind about how things could possibly happen to her dad, mom, brother, bigger and little sisters.

Last but not least, I do agree with the author that the story is not just her story. It's also a story for everyone who had suffered under the Khmer Rouge regime.

A terrifying story about a family trying to survive through the Cambodian Civil War. The book depicts the horrors of that time so vividly, that you literally painstakingly live the story and shudder from all the atrocities that were taking place during so many years.

After reading this book, the first urge was to visit Cambodia and learn more about its history and politics. This must say a LOT about a book.

Totally recommended.