In the Shadow of the Banyan, Vaddey Ratner
In the Shadow of the Banyan, Vaddey Ratner
2 Rating(s)
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In the Shadow of the Banyan

Author: Vaddey Ratner

Narrator: Greta Lee

Unabridged: 13 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2012


Synopsis

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.

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. It will reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive through a furtive bow, a hidden ankle bracelet, fragments of remembered poetry. It will ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Cambodian killing fields between 1975 and 1979, when an estimated two million people lost their lives. 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.

For 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. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. 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. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

About Vaddey Ratner

Vaddey Ratner is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Her critically acclaimed bestselling debut novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, was a Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and has been translated into seventeen languages. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Cornell University, where she specialized in Southeast Asian history and literature. Her most recent novel is Music of the Ghosts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Nina (ninjasbooks) on June 04, 2023

I knew this book would be emotional for me, since I’ve been in Cambodia and seen the killing fields. I still can’t wrap my head around how many lost their lives in just five years, but reading this book made it more real. Reading about it as a story was different to seeing the unnamed skulls in the......more

Goodreads review by Julie on February 01, 2013

To render historical, political fiction in the voice and through the eyes of a young child, a writer sets herself a tremendous challenge and takes on great risk. Children are naturally fanciful, unreliable creatures - not dishonest, but only able to offer the truth as their immature brains can grasp......more

Goodreads review by Martha on December 03, 2016

This novel was slow going for me. This was a story the author admits is pretty much her own, of a childhood derailed and torn apart by the Revolution in Cambodia in the 1970s. As a sheltered and privileged child, she and her family are particularly vulnerable and very much unaware of what is brewing......more

Goodreads review by Tania on September 12, 2014

I didn't know so much sadness could exist in so small a place This must be one of the most exquisitely written books I've read in a long time. It's based on the authors own experience during the regime of Cambodia's Khymer Rouge. There is a few things that stands out and makes this different to other......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on July 31, 2012

The Good Stuff Heartbreaking - this story will haunt you long after you have read it The prose is so exquisite and beautifully written, such talent for first time author It is hard for me to express how spectacular this book is, everything I want to say sounds trite when compared to the beauty of th......more