Book description
award-winning journalist Elizabeth Becker started covering Cambodia in 1973 for The Washington Post , when the country was perceived as little more than a footnote to the Vietnam War. Then, with the rise of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 came the closing of the border and a systematic reorganization of…
Why read it?
1 author picked When The War Was Over as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Elizabeth Becker’s sweeping account of Pol Pot’s genocidal regime was essential reading for me as I struggled to understand what befell Cambodia in the 1970s-90s. A foreign correspondent in Cambodia starting in 1973, Becker witnessed some of Cambodia’s disasters firsthand and interviewed scores of survivors and perpetrators, including Pol Pot himself, at great personal risk.
This book adds vital context from the French colonial era, Pol Pot’s political education in Paris, U.S. bombing campaigns, and Lon Nol’s 1970 coup before “Pol Pot Time” (as Cambodians call the Khmer Rouge era) to the aftermath: Vietnam’s invasion and occupation, refugee camps and…
From Kim's list on illuminate the Cambodian experience.
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