Author: Loung Ung

Ung was five when the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh in April 1975. Her father was a government officer, which was a death sentence once discovered; both parents and two of her siblings were killed, and she was put through training as a child soldier in a camp for orphans. She escaped by boat with her elder brother and his wife in 1980, spent five months in a Thai refugee camp and was resettled in Vermont on a church sponsorship. First They Killed My Father appeared in 2000 and Angelina Jolie directed the film. From 1997 to 2005 she was spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World, an offshoot of the campaign that took the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Two further memoirs follow the American half of the story.