Facing the Torturer

✍ Scribed by Parti communiste du Kampuchea.;Bizot, François;Kang, Kech Ieu;Parti communiste du Kampuchea

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; Alfred A. Knopf
• Year: 2012
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 124 KB
• Edition: 1st U.S. ed
• Category: Fiction
• City: New York, Cambodia, Cambodia.
• ISBN: 1299057950

✦ Synopsis

The author of the acclaimed memoir The Gate now gives us a mesmerizing account of his personal relationship with one of the most infamous torturers of the twentieth century, and of his transformative experience observing and participating in that man's recent trial for war crimes.

In 1971, François Bizot was researching Khmer pottery and Buddhist ritual in rural Cambodia when, along with two Cambodian assistants, he was arrested by Communist guerrillas on suspicion of being an American spy. In captivity, Bizot would establish an unlikely rapport with his interrogator, Comrade Duch, a twenty-nine-year-old former math teacher, now commander of the jungle encampment. After many long conversations, Duch would become convinced of Bizot's innocence, finally deciding to release his prisoner against the wishes of his superiors, including one Saloth Sar--the future Pol Pot. And so it was on Christmas Day 1971 that Bizot was allowed to depart the camp but obliged to...

✦ Subjects

Cambodia