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Also by Vaddey Ratner:

Music of the Ghosts, April 2017
Hardcover / e-Book
In The Shadow Of The Banyan, August 2012
Hardcover / e-Book

IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN
By: Vaddey Ratner

Simon & Schuster
August 2012
On Sale: July 31, 2012
336 pages
ISBN: 1451657706
EAN: 9781451657708
Kindle: B0064CMKNS
Hardcover / e-Book
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Fiction Family Life

Told from the tender perspective of a young girl who comes of age amid the Cambodian killing fields, this searing first novel—based on the author’s personal story—has been hailed by Little Bee author Chris Cleave as “a masterpiece…utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful.”

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

     Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

Media Buzz

Morning Edition - August 14, 2012