Loung Ung was 5 years old in 1975 when the soldiers marched into her city. “That day, they were smiling,” says the human rights activist. “People were screaming, ‘The war is over! The war is over!’ I didn’t know we had been in a war. But they were wearing black shirts and pants, and that was different for us because Cambodia is a very colorful culture; we’d wear bright colors. My first thought was, ‘If they are so happy, why are they all in black?’”
Ung found out quickly enough, much to her regret, as these seeming liberators began to torture and kill anyone considered a threat, including artists and intellectuals and, ultimately, her father, a military police officer. “Over the next three years, eight months and 20 days, I…
