Cambodia Year Zero [Paperback]

Francois Ponchaud (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Viking (June 29, 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713911247
• ISBN-13: 978-0713911244
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,387,124 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The first great expose, November 28, 2005

By 

Daniel Dennis (Brisbane, Queensland Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cambodia: Year Zero (Hardcover)

This writer was the first really able literary whistleblower to take after the Pol Pot government. What was going on was widely suspected. In a little remembered outcry, Senator George McGovern (remember him?) publicly called for international intervention in 1978 to save Cambodia from barbarism. But most on the left were ambiguous (the stories beggar belief...give the revolutionaries time...they will grow out of their wildness). Cambodia was invisible in the world consciousness at the time - the west wanted nothing but peace and quiet after the Vietnam tumult. Then came Monsiieur Ponchard's book.

In the decades of films and commentary since, this book holds up extremely well. Considering the deadly walls of silence thrown up by the Khmer Rouge regime after 1975 (they even banned telephones as part of their total Maoist re-fit) the author penetrated with considerable accuracy and sure footedness into the operation of this most murderous regime. The factual accuracy with which the power structure is described is surprising. He gets the personnel right, the utopianism of the leading players, and their influences - Maoist in economics, Stalinist in rejecting any possibility of "re-education" in creating the new society. The author's clinical style of writing takes us through the establishment of the terror state, and disentangles the knottiest part of the story - how did the Khmer Rouge make their pitch so successfully to the peasantry even granted the US bombing from 1969? THere were other players and resistance groups. The author excells at showing the KR's usurpation of Sihanouk's authority following his overthrow by Lon Nol, and how his call for the "brothers and sisters" to go into the forest and resist lead the peasantry straight into the arms of Pol Pot, until then a deadly but marginal figure. The author's chilling treatise on how a peasantry who believed in forest spirits were sold on a crusade to re-start history and re-capture their long lost Angkorean glory is one of the most important stories of history. This is a superb telling and a powerful warning.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars devestating, September 12, 2003

By 

Richard H. White (hilton head island, s.c.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cambodia: Year Zero (Hardcover)

I first read Ponchaud's work some 25 yrs. ago. I was shocked, devastated, angry and stunned. As a university student I naively thought that this sort of thing ended during the Second War. Sadly, the years have taught me that this is not the case. I think in our current state of affairs that this study should be re-read before we (the USA) set up other nations for failure as we did in Cambodia and seem intent on doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Those who forget the past are condemed to repeat its mistakes." Let us not forget. Ponchaud's work must be kept alive.

5.0 out of 5 stars this book was the first voice out there., December 22, 2011

By 

Michael P. Dobey (colorado springs) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cambodia: Year Zero (Hardcover)

Unlike today , genocide was not that hard to conceal in the 1970's. In fact the world was unaware pretty much of it and although the state department knew about it , the general public had no idea. Today monsters like osama bin laudin, (he lead the massacres in afganistan before 9/11) , the congo and the sudan are a cell phone signal or sat phone signal away. But not back in the 70's. And this book unleashed the story on the world back then. Of course , you can get a later book from another author but this was the first to do it.