Stay Alive, My Son - (Touchstone Books (Paperback)) by Pin Yathay (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Documenting the 27 months from the arrival of the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh to his escape into Thailand, Pin Yathay's Stay Alive, My Son is a powerful and haunting memoir of Cambodia's killing fields.

Review Quotes

"This memoir describes in harrowing detail life in the early years of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. . . Written in the hope that his missing son might see the book and be reunited with his father, Pin's memoir is a direct, honest account of his two years on the prison farm."--MultiCultural Review

"During the Kampuchean revolutionary madness . . . all the urban population was driven out to work in the country, creating new peasant communities which operated on strict, dogmatic Maoist lines. . . . Pin Yathay's story is told with no attempt at self-aggrandizement. . . . For he has to live with the shame of having deserted his own child in order to facilitate his escape, of losing his wife in the jungle through ineptitude: it is a revelation of prehistoric strength within the human conscience which is far beyond our imaginings."--Times Literary Supplement

"In 1975, the Republic of Cambodia was torn asunder by the 'liberating' forces of Pol Pot. Pin Yathay, an engineer employed by the Ministry of Public Works, was a witness to the tragedy. . . . His entire family and unnumbered friends were annihilated. . . . A heart-rending account of the disintegration of an entire social system, caused by the paranoid policies of Khmer Rouge cadres."--Christian Science Monitor

About the Author