Her family has always had servants to do their work.
Seven-year-old Raami's father is both a prince and a poet. Always somewhere there was light, and, though transient, it flashed all the more brilliantly because of the surrounding dark.” - Vaddey Ratner, “In the Shadow of the Banyan”With that powerful image near the end of “In the Shadow of the Banyan” (2012), first-time novelist Vaddey Ratner suggests the hope within little Raami and her once-delicate mother that allows them to survive those years in which the Khmer Rouge destroy Cambodia in their mindless quest to create a perfect country.In her autobiographical novel, Ratner tells of an elite family in Phnom Penh as the rebels take over the country. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Over the next four years, as the Khmer Rouge attempts to strip the population of every shred of individual identity, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of her childhood-the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. It will give you hope, and it will confirm the power of storytelling to lift us up and help us not only survive but transcend suffering, cruelty, and loss.įor seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours, bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. It will ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Cambodian killing fields between 19, when an estimated two million people lost their lives.
It will reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive through a furtive bow, a hidden ankle bracelet, fragments of remembered poetry. You are about to read an extraordinary story, a PEN Hemingway Award finalist “rich with history, mythology, folklore, language and emotion.” It will take you to the very depths of despair and show you unspeakable horrors. A beautiful celebration of the power of hope, this New York Times bestselling novel tells the story of a girl who comes of age during the Cambodian genocide.
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