Overview
Pol Pot was an idealistic, reclusive figure with great charisma and personal charm. He initiated a revolution whose radical egalitarianism exceeded any other in history. But in the process, Cambodia desended into madness and his name became a byword for oppression. In the three-and-a-half years of his rule, more than a million people, a fifth of Cambodia's population, were executed or died from hunger and disease. A supposedly gentle, carefree land of slumbering temples and smiling peasants became a concentration camp of the mind, a slave state in which absolute obedience was enforced on the 'killing fields'. Why did it happen How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares Philip Short, the biographer of Mao, has spent four years travelling the length of Cambodia, interviewing surviving leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement and sifting through previously closed archives. Here, the former Khmer Rouge Head of State, Pol's brother-in-law and scores of lesser figures speak for the first time at length about their beliefs and motives.
Full Product Details
Author: Philip Short
Publisher: John Murray Press
Imprint: John Murray Publishers Ltd
Dimensions:
Width: 12.90cm
, Height: 3.80cm
, Length: 19.70cm
Weight: 0.419kg
ISBN: 9780719565694
ISBN 10: 0719565693
Pages: 560
Publication Date: 06 June 2005
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
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Reviews
'A superb, chilling, yet human portrait of a monster' -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Daily Telegraph 'A model of research ... an intelligent and compassionate account of the Cambodian nightmare' -- Spectator 'Like a clever and determined detective, Short has exposed the secrets ... The result is horrifying, but it must be read' -- Scotland on Sunday 'Brings clear thinking to the big questions of blame' -- Sunday Times 'Comprehensive and eloquent biography of a monster' -- Literary Review 'Short unerringly broadens the inquiry to the point where serious history begins, and serious judgements can be made' -- Financial Times 'Short's brilliantly detailed account is a salutary one' -- Sunday Herald 20041031 'Riveting' -- Scotsman 20041106 'Philip Short has done a spectacularly efficient job of describing what happened, and how' -- Economist 20041106 'Exhaustive and authoritative' -- Times Literary Supplement 20050401 'Short has made a Herculean effort to reconstruct the past.' -- Telegraph, Robert Colville. 20050401 'The result is a searching account' -- Sunday Times 20050814
Author Information
Philip Short was for many years a foreign correspondent for the BBC, and now lives and writes in southern France. He first encountered Pol Pot in Beijing in 1977. His last book, Mao: A Life, has been hailed as the definitive biography of the founder of modern China.
