 Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. When Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed the city in April 1975, Loung’s family fled their home and were eventually forced to disperse to survive.
Loung was trained as a child soldier while her brothers and sisters were sent to labour camps. In 1980, at the age of 10, Loung Ung escaped Cambodia with her eldest brother and sister-in-law. They fled to the USA as refugees, leaving behind their three surviving siblings, including her 12-year-old sister Chou.
In her second book, Loung Ung describes her own new life in the affluent West, juxtaposed with an account of her sister Chou’s life in a stricken Cambodia, during the fifteen years until they were reunited. Loung will be talking to Jenni how she came to terms with her past and her guilt at being, as she sees it, the lucky one.
“After They Killed Our Father” is published in March by Mainstream Publishing, ISBN 978-1-84596-237-1 |
