Loung Ung · 2000 · survival

Loung Ung's memoir of the Khmer Rouge. A five-year-old from a comfortable Phnom Penh family, she is driven with millions into the countryside when the city falls in 1975 - through forced-labour villages, starvation and the loss of her parents, trained as a child soldier - before escaping through Vietnam and a refugee camp to a new life in Vermont.

1. 1
   Phnom Penh

   Five-year-old Loung's comfortable life ends on 17 April 1975 when the Khmer Rouge take the city and force every family out.

2. 2
   Ro Leap

   After months of forced moves the family is settled at this labour village, working the fields on starvation rations for eighteen months.

3. 3
   Pursat

   Sent to a camp to be trained as a child soldier; when Vietnam invades, Loung escapes in the chaos and finds her surviving siblings.

4. 4
   Phnom Penh

   The children make their way back toward the capital, and Loung and her brother Meng resolve to reach America.

5. 5
   Saigon

   By fishing boat down the Mekong into Vietnam, the first leg of the long escape.

6. 6
   Lam Sing

   Smuggled across the Gulf of Thailand to a refugee camp, where they wait for a sponsor.

7. 7
   Vermont

   Sponsored and resettled in Vermont in 1980, Loung begins a new life far from the killing fields.