Pol Pot

Description

Philip Short observed Pol Pot at close quarters during the one and only official visit Pol ever made abroad, to China in 1975. He was struck by Pol Pot's charm and charisma, yet, soon after, the leader would emerge as the architect of one of the most radical and ruthless experiments in social engineering ever undertaken. His egalitarian utopia released a reign of terror that would result in one in every five Cambodians - more than a million people - perishing in the killing fields of from hunger. Why did it happen? How did an idealistic dream of justice and prosperity mutate into one of humanity's worst nightmares? To answer these questions, Short traveled through Cambodia, interviewing former Khmer Rouge leaders and sifting through previously closed archives around the world. Key figures, including Khlen Samphan and Ieng Sary, Pol Pot's brother-in-law and foreign minister, speak here for the first time. Philip Short's masterly narrative reveals how Pol Pot engineered his country's desolation, fashining the definitive portrait of the man who headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times. (back cover)

Description

"The man the world knew as Pol Pot headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times. An idealistic reclusive figure of great charisma and personal charm, he initiated a revolution whose radical egalitarianism exceeded any other in history. In the process, his country descended into madness and his name became a byword for sanguinary oppression. During the three-and-a-half years of Pol Pot's 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. Philip Short has spent four years travelling the length and breadth of Cambodia, interviewing surviving leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge movement and sifting through previously closed archives from China, Russia and Vietnam, as swell as Cambodia itself. 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, as Philip Short traces Pol Pot's life from altruistic youth to become one of the twentieth century's most egregious political monsters. The horrors the Khmer Rouge perpetrated, and Pol Pot's dystopia, grew out of Cambodian history and culture, and the paranoia of a small, vulnerable country, squeezed between powerful neighbours. But China, France and, above all, the United States share moral responsibility. Cambodia's suffering is an object lesson in the perils of applying simplistic solutions to complicated problems."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Genres

• Biography.

Other Editions

• Pol Pot: The history of a nightmarePaperbackJohn Murray Publishers Ltd2004-01-01
• Pol PotHardcoverJohn Murray2004
• Pol PotHardcoverHenry Holt2005-01-01
• Pol PotPaperbackJohn Murray2005-01-01
• Pol PotHardcoverHenry Holt and Co.2005-01-13
• Pol PotPaperbackHenry Holt and Company2006-01-01
• Pol Pot (French Edition)DENO�L (�DITIONS)2007-07-10