'An outstanding book of astonishing power . . . One finishes it with an ache in the heart' JON SWAIN, writer and foreign correspondent, author of River of Time 'Through a profoundly moving tale that weaves together the connected stories of a victim, his surviving family, and members of the regime, Robert Carmichael brings us into the heart of the darkness that took over Cambodia, bringing it alive in the way no mere statistics can. I've not seen a comparable book about these horrors' ADAM HOCHSCHILD, award-winning author of King Leopold's Ghost 'The intimate and heartbreaking story of the disappearance of one man, and the decades of suffering that followed as his family searched for answers' SETH MYDANS, former Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times In 1977, Neary was two years old and living in Paris when her father Ouk Ket, a Cambodian diplomat, was recalled home 'to get educated to better fulfil [his] responsibilities'. It was to be many years before Neary and her mother Martine were finally able to establish what had happened to Ket, their father and husband. In this moving memoir, through a tragedy that engulfs a single family, journalist Robert Carmichael, explores with great sensitivity Phnom Penh's infamous S-21 prison and its commander, Comrade Duch, and Cambodia's descent into terror. During the Khmer Rouge's four-year reign of terror, two million people died in Cambodia. In telling the moving story of the quest of two women to learn the fate of their husband and father, Tell Me What Happened to My Father illuminates the tragedy of a nation. Having been found responsible for the deaths of more than 12,000 people, Duch was the first Khmer Rouge member to be jailed for crimes committed during Pol Pot's catastrophic 1975-9 rule during which millions were executed or died from starvation, illness and overwork. The Khmer Rouge closed Cambodia's borders, barred all communication with the outside world and sought to turn the clock back to Year Zero. They outlawed religion, markets, money, education and even the concept of family. But the revolution soon imploded, driven to destruction by the incompetence and paranoia of the leadership. Like hundreds of others, when he returned in 1977, Ouk Ket was utterly unaware of the terrors being wrought in the revolution's name. Carmichael has woven together the stories of five people whose lives intersected to traumatic effect: Duch; Ket's daughter, Neary, who was just two when her father disappeared; Ouk Ket himself; Ket's French wife, Martine; and Ket's cousin, Sady, who never left Cambodia and still lives there today. Through these personal stories and months spent following Duch's trial, Carmichael extrapolates from the experience of one man to tell the story of a nation. In doing so, he reaffirms the value of the individual, countering the Khmer Rouge's nihilistic maxim that: 'To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss.'