Episode Details

As a child, Lim Muy Lang grew up in a prosperous Sino-Khmer family in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in April 1975, her family, along with the entire population of Phnom Penh, was forced to immediately leave the city for the countryside. What followed was a harrowing struggle for survival under the Khmer Rouge’s radical revolutionary regime, which led to the deaths of all of Muy Lang’s immediate family members, and much of her extended family. In the Shadow of the Khmer Rouge: A Child Survivor’s Memoir (NUS Press, 2026), is Muy Lang’s account of what happened. It’s a story of almost unimaginable pain, cruelty, and loss, but also an incredible struggle for survival. And not least, the book is a delightful, deeply personal recollection of childhood and family life in Cambodia before 1975.

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