Like Dith Pran, the Cambodian doctor and interpreter whom Ngor played in an Oscar-winning performance in The Killing Fields, Ngor lived through the atrocities that the 1984 film portrayed. And in his memoir, Survival in the Killing Fields, he tells the gripping and frequently terrifying story of his term in the hell created by the communist Khmer Rouge.

I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. Nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. “The Cambodian Experiment: Great Change at Heavy Cost: Cambodia’s Experiment: Changes at Heavy Cost.” The Washington Post, December 29, 1978. “Deterioration Threatens Angkor Wat: Cambodia’s Political Needs Undercut Ancient Temple’s Upkeep” The Washington Post, December 28, 1978. “Cambodia: A Look at Border War With Vietnam: Artillery Thumps on Cambodia-Vietnam Border.” The Washington Post, December 27 ,1978. “Vietnamese Invasion Of Cambodia Draws Criticism by U.S.” The Washington Post, January 4, 1979. “Rebels Threaten Phnom Penh: Offensive Threatens Cambodia’s Capital.” The Washington Post, January 6, 1979. “Pol Pot Interview Turns Into 90-Minute Lecture.” The Washington Post, December 31, 1978. “Minor Characters.” The New York Times, August 28, 2005, sec.

“Cambodia Totters.” The Washington Post, January 7, 1979, sec. “Cambodia Offers To Open Border To Westerners: Cambodia Offers to Open Borders to Western Observers.” The Washington Post, October 14, 1978. “A Journey Into the New Cambodia: ‘But We Are at War, We Have Enemies’ Cambodia’s Leaders Step Away From Modernity.” The Washington Post, December 26, 1978. Reporting from her 1978 Visit to Democratic Kampuchea “For Cambodia, an Oscar Nod Means Much More than Box-Office Gold.” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2014. Here’s Why I Did.” Washington Post, March 6, 2015. “Journalists Don’t Always Testify at Tribunals. “Reporting Massive Human Rights Abuses behind a Façade.” Columbia Journalism Review, October 3, 2016. “Opinion: The Women Who Covered Vietnam.” The New York Times, November 17, 2017. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1986īecker, Elizabeth. When the war was over : the voices of Cambodia's revolution and its people. America's Vietnam War : a narrative history. Bophana : Love in the time of the Khmer Rouge.

Stay Alive, My Son by David P. Chandler