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First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung: book review



First They Killed My Father: a daughter of Cambodia remembers (2000) is set in Cambodia from the time of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot: April 1975-1979.

This is a memoir, and the narrator Loung Ung writes in a simple, clear style that gets to the heart of what a 5-year-old girl experiences when her family is evacuated from the capital, Phnom Penh, when the Khmer Rouge soldiers take control. 

Her family consists of her mother and father, three brothers – aged 18, 16, and 10 – and three sisters – aged 14, 8, and 3. Loung is the second youngest. 

Her family walk for seven days to their uncle’s village. Even in the villages, the soldiers are on patrol. Seven months later, the family travel westwards to the village of Ro Leap. 

Communism is meant for ‘all to be equal’ but the villages have three levels of citizenship: ‘The first-class  citizenry comprises the chief, who has authority over the whole village, his aides and the Khmer Rouge soldiers.They are all base people and the Khmer Rouge cadres. They have the power to teach, police, judge, and execute. They make all decisions: work details, food rations per family, severity of punishment. They are the eyes and ears of the Angkar [organisation] at the local level.’ The base people, the second level, are the ‘bullies’ who work closely with the first-class citizens. The new people of the village are the lowest, with no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement – ‘they are given the hardest work and the longest hours.’

A year under the Communist regime, Loung is six years old and forever hungry as many die of starvation. Her 14-year-old sister Keav dies too of food poisoning. 

By December 1976, Pa ‘must leave’ with two soldiers. He is never seen again. There are rumours of his death as part of the mass execution of a quarter of the country’s citizens, but there are also rumours of his escape. 

Labour camps are established, and her family are separated. Luong is trained as a child soldier. Her memoir ends in 1979 when the Vietnamese enter Cambodia and defeat the Khmer Rouge army. 

Loung Ung describes the brutality and the torture of the Khmer Rouge regime, and what people do to survive. But mostly, this memoir is about the bonds that bind people together in tragedies, especially family bonds. After the death of her parents, and two sisters, she retains both dignity and integrity. It’s worth a read. 



MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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