Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (novelette)

Disturbing and spare. Pol Pot's daughter lives a rich but lonely life. Her only hobby is buying new cell phones, even though she has no one to call on them. She's haunted by the ghosts created by her father, and eventually creates a ritual to appease them that is an odd mixture of new technology and old wisdom.

Other reviewers have taken issue with using a real person and real atrocities in a ghost/fantasy story. I do believe artists should be *allowed* to use anything they please as fodder for their art, but that some things are so horrific, or are part of continuing power inequalities, that it may not be *ethical* to use them. Writing about the Khmer Rouge seems like one of those things one must be very, very careful about doing. To show more me, it seems like Ryman grapples with the tale in good faith, in that he does not in the least try to minimize the harm suffered by the Cambodian people and repeatedly reminds the reader that his story is not the true story of Pol Pot's daughter. And it is a beautifully told story, as all of Ryman's are. show less

A beautiful southeast Asian ghost story dealing with the killing fields of Cambodia.