To be permanently hungry and to watch your little eight-year-old girl slowly dying . . . is an unbearable torment. A French citizen, Denise Affonço, was brought up in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. When the Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, she was deported with her family to the countryside, where they endured four years of hard labor, famine, sickness, and death. Affonço’s account of these years is remarkably fresh, having been written immediately after her liberation in 1979. Denise Affonço was a witness at the trial in absentia of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary held in 1979. Ieng Sary is due to be tried by the UN backed tribunal in Cambodia which makes this book especially topical. Denise Affonço lives in Paris but will be touring the USA and Canada to promote her book in March/April 2009.
