My Survival in the Killing Fields

By Mao Sim

The genocide in Cambodia, which took place following the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, is difficult to comprehend. For many, particularly in the west, it is an ugly scar which taints the reputation of the country and the region as a whole. For others, and some who survived it and lived through the mass killings, starvation and forced marches, it is something which has defined them in a way that cannot be quantified. 

My Survival in the Killing Fields tells the story of one incredible woman, Mao Sim, and the extraordinary journey she undertook as a young girl, emerging from the horror of the conflict which engulfed her country to try to find a new life amidst the pointless destruction. 

But her escape from one dangerous situation leads her into another, as she was to become an abused wife in a loveless arranged marriage. 

Alone, with nobody to confide in, Mao was forced to deal with senseless brutality for the second time in her life, fighting to maintain her dignity and even her sanity, while still grieving for the family she had lost, until finally she managed to break free and find the true happiness she had always sought. 

An inspirational book. One of fighting impossible odds, but one ultimately of hope. The debut memoir from Mao Sim, My Survival In The Killing Fields, is a great addition to the great works of Loung Ung, Philip Short, and Haing Ngor.

Editorial Reviews:

From Kirkus Reviews:

Sim grew up during the horrifying period in the 1970s when Pol Pot ruled Cambodia and forced urban inhabitants into the countryside. He starved, beat, tortured, and executed millions of his fellow citizens. The Khmer Rouge murdered the author's father and forced her mother to abandon Sim in her village and travel far away to work as a virtual agricultural slave laborer. Left entirely to her own devices and compelled by circumstance to care, not just for herself, but for her two younger sisters as well, the author attempted but failed to ward off the demons of starvation. One of her sisters succumbed to hunger and died of malnutrition. "I felt as if I had been forsaken," Sim writes. "Loneliness became my best friend and we were inseparable." The author then miraculously encountered a mysterious, faceless woman who aided her and provided her what little comfort she had in this nightmarish world of turmoil, deprivation, and death. Sim's discovery of Christianity and her ever-growing faith provided her a thin cord of hope to which she clung. Through her tenacity and faith, she came through this ordeal to end up with her family in a refugee camp waiting for resettlement in America. Finally, after many years, the author's wish came true and she arrived in the United States, only to end up through an arranged marriage wedded to an emotionally abusive man.

A compelling account of the dire Cambodian genocide and its aftermath, told by a woman who survived this terrible era through her personal fortitude and Christian faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mao Sim
• Release date: May 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781502944641