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In the Shadow of the Banyan

A Novel

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In the Shadow of the Banyan

By: Vaddey Ratner
Narrated by: Greta Lee
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About this listen

Told from the tender perspective of a young girl who comes of age amid the Cambodian killing fields, this searing first novel - based on the author’s personal story - has been hailed by Little Bee author Chris Cleave as “a masterpiece… utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful.”

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 labor, 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 Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

©2012 Vaddey Ratner (P)2012 Simon & Schuster Biographical Fiction Coming of Age Fiction Literary Fiction United States Emotionally Gripping

Critic Reviews

"This stunning memorial expresses not just the terrors ofthe Khmer Rouge but also the beauty of what was lost. A hauntingly powerful novel imbued with the richness of old Cambodian lore, the devastation of monumental loss, and the spirit of survival." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Vaddey Ratner's novel is ravishing in its ability to humanize and personalize the Cambodian genocide of the 1970s. She makes us look unflinchingly at the evil that humankind is capable of, but she gives us a child to hold our hand - an achingly believable child - so that we won't be overwhelmed. As we have passed from one century of horrors and been plunged into a new century giving us more of the same, In the Shadow of the Banyan is a truly important literary event." (Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain)
"Often lyrical, sometimes a bit ponderous: a painful,personal record of Cambodia's holocaust." ( Kirkus Reviews)

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Profile Image for alison

Compelling tale..

A moving story of the human sorrows inflicted under the deadly Khmer Rouge Regime as seen through the eyes of a young girl. It is a bit odd to describe a book about such a terrible subject as beautiful, yet that is what it is due to Ratner's wonderful narrative. Some could say that is 'fluffs' over the realities of the time, but these are thoughts and memories from a child's perspective - there are countless other books available that cover the horrors in grim detail, that is not what this book is about. The story is not just about the plight of the Cambodian people under the Regime, it is the tale of a young girl's experiences as she is dragged from innocence through a series of tragic events and her way of finding hope by referring to the stories and traditional beliefs of her culture.
Books like this remind us of the ugliness and the beauty of human kind.
Lee's narration can seem a little 'airy' for the subject matter, but as the book is a child's interpretation of events it somehow acceptable. Both the writing style and narration no way detract from the seriousness of the subject matter.

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