In 1975, Ung, now the national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World, was the five-year-old child of a large, affluent family living in Phnom Phen. As well-educated Chinese-Cambodians, with the father a government agent, her family was in great danger when the Khmer Rouge took over the country and throughout Pol Pot's barbaric regime. Her parents' strength and her father's knowledge of Khmer Rouge ideology enabled the family to survive together for a while, posing as illiterate peasants, moving first between villages, and then from one work camp to another. Her restrained, unsentimental account of the four years she spent surviving the regime before escaping with a brother to Thailand and eventually the United States is astonishing. She describes the physical devastation she is surrounded by but always returns to her memories and hopes for those she loves. Her joyful memories of life in Phnom Penh are close even as she is being trained as a child soldier, and as, one after another, both parents and two of her six siblings are murdered in the camps.Twenty-five years after the rise of the Khmer Rouge, this powerful account is a triumph.

In the epilogue, Loung thanks her editor, because she's says without the editing, we'd all be reading a much longer book. In this case, I would love to read "the much longer book".... I can't say enough positive about the book, even though I know it has received criticism. It's a first hand account of the same stories I've heard first hand over.. Stories that deserve to be retold so that hopefully they never have to be experienced again. Whether you are an academic with an interest in Cambodia / Southeast Asia or the casual reader, you will be haunted a young girl's life..

It had such great reviews, and was supposed to be amazing, but I couldn't get into this book as much as I felt I should have. Some of the individual chapters were interesting, but they didn't fit into a story that I was particularly interested in, or felt compelled by.
I seem to have read a series of these "beautiful" books that have highly symbolic characters and story lines that don't mean much to me. The characters in this book were so abstract, and I didn't understand the role of several of them.
Interesting, though, I had no idea the Czech soldiers played a role in the Russian Revolution, or the existence of the castrate groups. Some of the conflicting groups in this book felt a bit over the top.
Took me a long time to read.

Usually I hate reading books with 'international best seller' plastered all over the front (I know I'm a snob), but I just didn't care with this one. It is so beautiful, so cruel, so slow - you get to see every side of a moment with complete lucidity throughout. My only main gripe is that I think it was over-egging the pudding a bit to have the cannibal AND the castrate AND the communists - had the communists not been in it it still would have served as an ample reflection of the horrors of that kind of extremism. But, still, amazing amazing. So well-written. So affecting.

All right. I admit it: this is my favourite book.

I'm going to give you/myself some space to get over this revelation.













I'd like to add that this translation is even sexier than I ever thought it could be, especially the notes. So alive! And calming. Wonderful.

One of my favorite books. I love the fact that this book can be viewed from different angles: political(anti communism), (love story), fantasy, etc.
A MUST read. You won't regret it.

All right. I admit it: this is my favourite book.

I'm going to give you/myself some space to get over this revelation.













I'd like to add that this translation is even sexier than I ever thought it could be, especially the notes. So alive! And calming. Wonderful.

Ayn Rand's We The Living is a novel set in Russia right after the revolution and explores the lifes and times of primarily three individuals: Kira, the female who wants to be an engineer and is passionately in love with Leo, the son of former Army General and the immistakable Andrei, who has risen from streets to become a formidable communist. To complete the cast is Victor, Kira's cousin, who does the needful to shed his bourgeois past and rise through the ranks; Pyerov and Sonia, who in their own way use communism to become richer and powerful, and other members of Kira's family. The novel dwells on how revolution alters not only their daily lifes, morals, ambitions but also reveals their base and basic human character. It is a tale of falsified hopes, broken dreams, corruption, love, and of the struggle of someone to survive a political system that is of utmost dislike to him/her.

Perhaps as the first book to come out of communist Russia, We The Living has gained more respect than it merits on basis of just literary qualities. Like all her heroes and heroines, Rand's prime suspects here are three idealists who seek to justify their different means for their selfish ends. The love triangle between Andrei, Leo and Kira is stifling reminder of how some people try to lead a dual life, hoping they can let two people be happily in love with them. While the novel is a great treatise on how and why communist Russia squandered the dreams of early revolutionaries, Kira fails to impress. Her convictions are full of contradictions, as are her means and methods of achieving them. If I really want someone to read about communist Russia, I'd ask them to pick Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. If Ayn Rand's objectivism or invidualism is the ideal, stop after reading Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

I figure I would have more interest towards this manifesto if I was interested in Communism, but it was a curious to see the pros and cons of communism.