The heartbreaking story of a daughter's search for her missing father in the living hell that was Pol Pot's Cambodia.
'An unforgettable book'
Elizabeth Becker, author of When the War Was Over
'To keep you is no benefit, to kill you is no loss'
Khmer Rouge saying
During the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror in Cambodia, two million people died, more than 12,000 of them in Tuol Sleng (S-21) prison. This extraordinary story of one family illuminates the tragedy of a nation.
Ouk Ket was a young Cambodian diplomat, recalled in 1977 'to get educated to better fulfil [his] responsibilities'. This is the story of his family's quest to find out what had happened to him.
Carmichael skilfully interweaves the stories of five people whose lives intersected to traumatic effect: Comrade Duch, commander of Phnom Penh's notorious S-21 prison; Ket's daughter, Neary, who was just two when her father disappeared; Ouk Ket; Ket's French wife, Martine; and Ket's cousin, Sady, who never left Cambodia and still lives there today.
'A profoundly moving tale . . . I've not seen a comparable book about these horrors'
Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost
'An intimate and heart-breaking story of the disappearance of one man, and the decades of suffering as his family searched for answers'
Seth Mydans, former Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times
'Carmichael's sharp prose and depth of knowledge . . . transforms a daughter's search for her missing father into a nation's journey to find peace and reconciliation with its brutal history of genocide'
Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father
'A standout'
Christian Science Monitor
'A perceptive, often heart-breaking book'
David Chandler, author of Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison
'Beautifully written . . . does a masterful job weaving the history of the Khmer Rouge tribunal with a more personal story of human tragedy and redemption'
Peter Maguire, author of Law and War, Facing Death in Cambodia and Thai Stick
'Arguably the most vivid and terrifying literary portrait of the prison to date'
Phnom Penh Post
Robert Carmichael worked for a decade as a foreign correspondent in Cambodia, including during 2009 when he covered the war crimes trial of Comrade Duch, who died in 2020. www.robertcarmichael.net
In this brilliant and vivid book, Robert Carmichael skilfully weaves personal accounts with history and reflective analysis, giving essential context to the violence. It is a powerful and compelling story that avoids casting the perpetrators as 'monsters'; instead, showing them to be terrifyingly ordinary. And throughout, Martine and Neary's anguished quest for answers brings home the true scope of the suffering that reached far beyond the walls of S-21.
