Stay Alive, My Son

[In 1975], the Republic of Cambodia was torn asunder by the 'liberating' forces of Pol Pot. Pin Yathay, an engineer employed by the Ministry of Public Works, was a witness to the tragedy. . . . His entire family and unnumbered friends were annihilated. . . . A heart-rending account of the disintegration of an entire social system, caused by the paranoid policies of Khmer Rouge cadres.-Christian Science Monitor "[During] the Kampuchean revolutionary madness . . . all the urban population was driven out to work in the country, creating new peasant communities which operated on strict, dogmatic Maoist lines. . . . [Pin Yathay's] story is told with no attempt at self-aggrandizement. . . . For he has to live with the shame of having deserted his own child in order to facilitate his escape, of losing his wife in the jungle through ineptitude: it is a revelation of prehistoric strength within the human conscience which is far beyond our imaginings."-Times Literary Supplement First published in the United States in 1988, this highly acclaimed autobiography is newly available as a Cornell Paperback with an updated preface and epilogue by Pin Yathay. In a new foreword, David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, discusses the continuing power and urgency of Pin Yathay's message.