PublishedFourth Estate, June 2012 |
ISBN9780732290573 |
FormatSoftcover, 256 pages |
Dimensions23.5cm × 15.4cm × 1.9cm |
In 1971, 30-year-old ethnographer François Bizot was captured by the Khmer Rouge and kept prisoner for three months in the Cambodian jungle, accused of being a CIA spy. His captor, Comrade Duch, eventually had him freed. It took Bizot decades to realise he owed his life to a man who, later in the Killing Fields regime, became one of Pol Pot’s most infamous henchmen.
Duch’s trial as a war criminal began in March 2009 and Bizot was the first witness to testify. Unable to reconcile the young man who saved his life with the war criminal who terrorised and killed countless innocent people, Bizot attended Duch’s trial and spent time with him in prison, trying to unearth whatever humanity Duch had left.
