Beyond the Horizon: Five Years With the Khmer Rouge

by Laurence Picq

A former revolutionary gives the only Western account of the Cambodian regime of Pol Pot, one of the most brutal dictators in all history, and tells how her family was torn apart and her daughters indoctrinated Pol Pot's murderous henchmen

218 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the dozen or so personal survival stories from the Pol Pot era that I've read, this was by far the most unusual. Laurence Picq was a 27-year old French woman who had married a Cambodian intellectual, moved to China, and then decided to go to Phnom Penh immediately after the Khmer Rouge takeover. Naive and dedicated to the lofty goals of Communism, she found herself a prisoner in a compound in the abandoned capital, along with the families of other KR cadres. She and her two daughters suffered constant humiliation and abuse over the course of five long years, including savage criticism from her husband Sikouen, but they were unable to escape until the Vietnamese invaded in January of 1979. The story of her journey to the Thai border is nothing less than horrifying; that she and her daughters survived is miraculous. In a fairly good translation from the French, Picq's ability to describe her own mental anguish is often poignant, sometimes vague, but the brutality of the Khmer Rouge is always vivid and frightening.