Author: Daguan ZhouPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cambodia
Languages : en
Pages : 106
Book Description
A Record of Cambodia
Author: Zhou DaguanPublisher: Silkworm Books
ISBN: 1628401729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 104
Book Description
Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Peter Harris Only one person has given us a first-hand account of the civilization of Angkor. This is the Chinese envoy, Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor in 1296–97 and wrote A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People after his return to China. To this day, Zhou’s description of the royal palace, sacred buildings, women, traders, slaves, hill people, animals, landscapes, and everyday life remains a unique portrait of thirteenth-century Angkor at a time when its splendors were still intact. Very little is known about Zhou Daguan. He was born on or near the southeastern coast of China, and was probably a young man when he traveled to Cambodia by boat. After returning home he faded into obscurity, though he seems to have lived on for several decades. Much of the text of Zhou’s book seems to have been lost over the centuries, but what remains still gives us a lively sense of Zhou the man as well as of Angkor. In this edition, Peter Harris translates Zhou Daguan’s work directly from Chinese to English to be published for the first time. Earlier English versions depended on a French translation done over a century ago, and lost much of the feeling of the original as a result. This entirely new rendering, which draws on a range of available versions of the Zhou text, brings Zhou’s many observations vividly and accurately back to life. An introduction and extensive notes help explain the text and put it in the context of the times. “Peter Harris has given a new generation of readers a masterly version of Zhou’s timeless and fascinating account that scholars of Cambodia are sure to relish and visitors to Angkor are sure to enjoy.”—David Chandler
Archiving the Unspeakable
Author: Michelle CaswellPublisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299297535
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
Roughly 1.7 million people died in Cambodia from untreated disease, starvation, and execution during the Khmer Rouge reign of less than four years in the late 1970s. The regime’s brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of “enemies of the state” were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable, Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering. Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars
A Short History of Cambodia
Author: John TullyPublisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1741158575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
In this concise and compelling history, Cambodia's past is described in vivid detail, from the richness of the Angkorean empire through the dark ages of the 18th and early-19th centuries, French colonialism, independence, the Vietnamese conflict, the Pol Pot regime, and its current incarnation as a troubled democracy. With energetic writing and passion for the subject, John Tully covers the full sweep of Cambodian history, explaining why this land of contrasts remains an interesting enigma to the international community. Detailing the depressing record of war, famine, and invasion that ha.
Dancing in Shadows
Author: Benny WidyonoPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742555532
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
This fascinating book recounts the remarkable tale of a career UN official caught in the turmoil of international and domestic politics swirling around Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. First as a member of the UN transitional authority and then as a personal envoy to the UN secretary-general, Benny Widyono re-creates the fierce battles for power centering on King Norodom Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge, and Prime Minister Hun Sen. He also sets the international context, arguing that great-power geopolitics throughout the Cold War and post-Cold War eras triggered and sustained a tragedy of enormous proportions in Cambodia for decades, leading to a flawed peace process and the decline of Sihanouk as a dominant political figure. Putting a human face on international operations, this book will be invaluable reading for anyone interested in Southeast Asia, the role of international peacekeeping, and the international response to genocide.
River of Time
Author: Jon SwainPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407072803
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Between 1970 and 1975 Jon Swain, the English journalist portrayed in David Puttnam's film, The Killing Fields, lived in the lands of the Mekong river. This is his account of those years, and the way in which the tumultuous events affected his perceptions of life and death as Europe never could. He also describes the beauty of the Mekong landscape - the villages along its banks, surrounded by mangoes, bananas and coconuts, and the exquisite women, the odours of opium, and the region's other face - that of violence and corruption.
In The Shadow Of The Banyan
Author: Vaddey RatnerPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1849837619
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 436
Book Description
A stunning, powerful debut novel set against the backdrop of the Cambodian War, perfect for fans of Chris Cleave and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 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 she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labour, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of 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 Banyanis testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. 'In the Shadow of the Banyanis one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered' Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand 'Ratner is a fearless writer, and the novel explores important themes such as power, the relationship between love and guilt, and class. Most remarkably, it depicts the lives of characters forced to live in extreme circumstances, and investigates how that changes them. To read In the Shadow of the Banyan is to be left with a profound sense of being witness to a tragedy of history' Guardian 'This is an extraordinary debut … as beautiful as it is heartbreaking' Mail on Sunday
Photography in Cambodia
Author: Nicholas CoffillPublisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462922988
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
A stunning visual journey through Cambodian culture, history, art, struggle, and modernization. Cambodia has two parallel histories. One is the constant stream of adventurers and diplomats, kings and rebels, archaeologists and artists drawn to the magnificent ruins at Angkor. Another is the formation of a nation through the Cambodian people's fierce struggles with colonialism, war, revolution, famine, and finally, the long road to recovery. This book captures these parallel stories through the eyes of talented photographers who were present to record such events. The images, which include many rare and never-before-published photos, are drawn from archives, national collections, libraries, and private collections. This treasure trove of nearly 500 photographs showcases the work of over 100 photographers--including pioneering female photographers, Cambodian and international photographers, and some who died soon after the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Within these pages, readers will find a fresh perspective on Cambodia. From the early days of French colonialism through the struggle for independence, and emergence into an uneasy peace in the 21st century.
Angkor and Cambodia in the Sixteenth Century
Author: BERNARD PHILIPPE. GROSLIERPublisher:
ISBN: 9789745242074
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
Groslier's seminal study of the accounts of early Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and adventurers in Cambodia was published in French in 1958, and is translated here into English for the first time. The reports of the Europeans record the earliest surviving first-hand accounts of Angkor, following the 'rediscovery' of the site by the Khmers, over a hundred years after its abandonment in 1432 CE, and four hundred years prior to the colonization of Cambodia by the French. While the accounts are fascinating in their own right, Groslier employs some of their key observations on the structure of Angkor in the 16th century to embark on further exploration of his own into the nature of Khmer civilization. Complementing his studies of the early accounts with the first aerial surveys of the site, Groslier reconstructs a broad picture of Angkorian civilization, its economy, the genius of its engineers and planners, its unique religious foundations and the pivotal humanitarian role of its god-kings. Angkor and Cambodia in the Sixteenth Century represents one of the major breakthroughs in our understanding of this rich and complex medieval Asian culture, and is a pillar on which all subsequent studies have been built. Essential for all readers, both scholarly and lay, who seek to further understand the society responsible for the construction of the great monuments of ancient Angkor.
Without Honor
Author: Arnold R. IsaacsPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476645841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447
Book Description
In a new and updated second edition, this book--first published in 1983--provides a detailed review of the end of the Vietnam War. Drawing on the author's eyewitness reporting and extensive research, the book relies on carefully reported facts, not partisan myths, to reconstruct the war's last years and harrowing final months. The catastrophic suffering those events brought to ordinary Vietnamese civilians and soldiers is vividly portrayed. The largely unremembered wars in Cambodia and Laos are examined as well, while new material in an updated final chapter points out troubling parallels between the Vietnam War and America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
