First They Killed My Father

“This is a harrowing, compelling story. Evoking a child’s voice and viewpoint, Ung has written a book filled with vivid and unforgettable details. I lost a night’s sleep to this book because I literally could not put it down, and even when I finally did, I lost another night’s sleep just from the sheer, echoing power of it.”
— Lucy Grealy, author of Autobiography of a Face From a childhood survivor of Cambodia’s brutal Pol Pot regime comes an unforgettable narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit. Until the age of five, Lounge Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights, and sassing her parents. While her beautiful mother worried that Loung was a troublemaker — that she stomped around like a thirsty cow — her beloved father knew Lounge was a clever girl. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Ung’s family fled their home and moved from village to village to hide their identity, their education, their former life of privilege. Eventually, the family dispersed in order to survive. Because Lounge was resilient and determined, she was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, while other siblings were sent to labor camps. As the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia, destroying the Khmer Rouge, Loung and her surviving siblings were slowly reunited. Bolstered by the shocking bravery of one brother, the vision of the others — and sustained be her sister’s gentle kindness amid brutality — Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life.