#vaddey ratner

[40-for-40]

Read the World, book 18 of 199

“In The Shadow of the Banyan” by Vaddey Ratner

Narrated by a child as she and her family are split asunder by civil war, the book was simultaneously beautiful and horrific. Witnessing the devastation of a country through the eyes of someone too young to understand everything happening around them, while as the reader you wait with bated breath for the next tragedy to occur - it was an emotional journey right to the end.

I’m struggling to find the right words to describe this story, which was based upon the author’s own family’s experiences. I highly recommend it, it’s a superb book and a wonder to experience.

[40-for-40]

Read the World - book 18 of 199

Cambodia!!

To represent Cambodia, I’ll be reading “In the Shadow of the Banyan” by Vaddey Ratner.

[deborahdonato]

Per conoscere una tragica pagina di storia

Per conoscere una tragica pagina di storia

Oggi su Critica letteraria, la mia recensione al romanzo di Vaddey Ratner All’ombra del baniano. L’autrice, cambogiana, ha scritto un romanzo autobiografico in cui narra l’orrore della violenze dei khmer rossi e delle deportazioni subite da lei e dalla sua famiglia. Tuttavia, nonostante la tragicità degli argomenti trattati, il romanzo è narrato con delicatezza e incanto, l’incanto di una bambina…

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[whilereadingandwalking]

In the Shadow of the Banyan is an autobiographical novel by Vaddey Ratner about her experience as a survivor of the Cambodian genocide that began in 1975. Protagonist Raami is seven when her and her family, royals living in Phnom Penh, are forcibly evacuated from their home and enter a whirlwind of imposed chaos and constant movement. The Khmer Rouge try to create a revolution of collective and classless identity, but their methods are brutal, including the murder of intellectuals and the religious and separation of families, and mismanagement led to widespread starvation and hunger. 

For such a devastating novel, Ratner bestows it with rich beauty. Cambodia is a beautiful place, and Ratner paints rich landscapes of rice paddies, of soft and aromatic blooms, of the rushing waters of the Mekong. Raami finds her capability for survival in the poems and stories her father gives her, in the sad beauty behind her mother's eyes, and in the outlooks they both instilled in her. The myths and fables of Cambodia, the tale of the Buddha, intertwine with their circumstances. It is a painful novel, hard and cruel, a book about suffering, grief, and loss, but has its roots in a fierce hope.

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

We are all beggars, my father said.  It doesn't matter what we wear - rags, a saffron robe, or silk.  We each ask the same of life.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

Always somewhere there was light, and, though transient, it flashed all the more brilliantly because of the surrounding dark.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

A story [ . . . ] can lead us back to ourselves, to our lost innocence, and in the shadow it casts over our present world, we begin to understand what we only intuited in our naïveté - that while all else may vanish, love is our one eternity.

In The Shadow Of The Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)

[can-i-quote-you-on-that]

'life, with all its cruelty and horror, was still worth living.'

In The Shadow Of The Banyan (Vaddey Ratner)