Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Stones Cry Out: A Cambodian Childhood, 1975-1980 (1987)by Molyda Szymusiak
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.  starbox | Nov 30, 2014 |  no reviews | add a review
"The Stones Cry Out is startlingly good as literature. It is also an important addition to a thin historical record.... Her account of the revolutionary rhetoric, set against the reality of what the revolutionaries were actually doing, is as macabre as any of the descriptions of bodies." --The Wall Street Journal "This is a powerful and compelling story of terror, struggle and death sprinkled with moments of tenderness, written by a woman who writes not of politics but only of what she experienced."--New York Times Book Review In 1975, Molyda Szymusiak (her adoptive name), the daughter of a high Cambodian official, was twelve years old and leading a relatively peaceful life in Phnom Penh. Suddenly, on April 17, Khmer Rouge radicals seized the capital and drove all its inhabitants into the countryside. The chaos that followed has been widely publicized, most notably in the movie The Killing Fields. Murderous brutality coupled with raging famine caused the death of more than two million people, nearly a third of the population. This powerful memoir documents the horror Cambodians experienced in daily life. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)959.6History and Geography Asia Southeast Asia CambodiaLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (4.17)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
3
This review is from: The Stones Cry out: A Cambodian Childhood 1975-1980: Cambodian Childhood, 1975-81 (Mass Market Paperback)
Published in 1984 by a young girl who lived through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, this starts when the family are uprooted from their middle class life by gangs of black-uniformed 'Mekongs' to traipse across the countryside and participate in forced labour on starvation rations - planting rice in shoulder-deep water and clearing mud for roads.
As those around her die of cholera and malnutrition, and the casual executions of Pol Pot's regime become commonplace, the author somehow manages to survive - just - until she ends up at a refugee camp and is adopted by a French couple (hence her European name.)
The terrible experiences the author underwent makes one want to automatically give this *5. However although a clear and concise account of events, it felt just a little too detached, almost as if she's relating something that happened to someone else, and loses a little of its power on that score.
But most certainly a valuable work, recording a horrific story that we should never forget. (