Alive in the Killing Fields: The True Story of Nawuth Keat, a Khmer Rouge Survivor Book

Alive in the Killing Fields is the real-life memoir of Nawuth Keat, a man who survived the horrors of war-torn Cambodia. He has now broken a longtime silence in the hope that telling the truth about what happened to his people and his country will spare future generations from similar tragedy.

In this captivating memoir, a young Nawuth defies the odds and survives the invasion of his homeland by the Khmer Rouge. Under the brutal reign of the dictator Pol Pot, he loses his parents, young sister, and other members of his family. After his hometown of Salatrave was overrun, Nawuth and his remaining relatives are eventually captured and enslaved by Khmer Rouge fighters. They endure physical abuse, hunger, and inhumane living conditions. But through it all, their sense of family holds them together, giving them the strength to persevere through a time when any assertion of identity is punishable by death.

Nawuth’s story of survival and escape from the Killing Fields of Cambodia is also a message of hope; an inspiration to children whose worlds have been darkened by hardship and separation from loved ones. This story provides a timeless lesson in the value of human dignity and freedom for readers of all ages.

VOYA

When the Khmer Rouge came to his village, burning the grass-roofed huts and shooting people randomly, Nawuth and his family hid in a ditch. Tricked into revealing their presence, his grandmother is shot first, pleading for their lives, and then his uncle, aunt, and babysitter. A single bullet pierces his mother and baby sister. Nawuth, only eleven, is shot three times, but survives by pretending to be dead. In the horrific months after, Nawuth, his surviving family members, and thousands of Cambodians are stripped of their possessions and forced to work long hours in rice fields. Occasionally Nawuth is reunited with his father, who eluded the enemy for a time by hiding in the jungle. Starved and tortured, brutally force-marched from place to place, the little family somehow stays together while around them many are being slaughtered. After three hellish years the Vietnamese invade Cambodia, bringing some relief. But life is still so full of hardship that Nawuth's older sister and her husband seek a way of escape for all of them. Told with stark simplicity, Nawuth's narrative is memorable yet accessible to young readers. Biographer Kendall notes in the foreword that the sentences are hers but the life story is his. This book and four companion titles each won the Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People Award. Reviewer: Martha K. Unruh