In one of the most powerful memoirs of persecution ever written, Denise Affonco recounts how her comfortable life in Phnom Penh was torn apart when the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia in April 1975. Denise and her family, along with millions of their fellow citrizens, werre deported to a living hell in the countryside where, for almost four years, they endured hard labour, famine, sickness and death. What gives this book its remarkable freshness is that much of it was written in the months after Denise Affonco's liberation in 1979."