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The Lost Executioner: A Story of the Khmer Rouge | 
 enlarge | Author: Nic Dunlop
Publisher: Walker & Company
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 202616
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.6
ISBN: 0802714722
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.6042
EAN: 9780802714725
ASIN: 0802714722
Publication Date: February 7, 2006
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Condition: Standard used condition.
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Product Description
In Cambodia, between 1975 and 1979, nearly two million people died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. As head of the Khmer Rouge secret police, Comrade Duch was responsible for the murder of more than 20,000 people considered enemies of the revolution. Twenty years later, not one member of the Khmer Rouge had been held accountable for what happened. Like so many others, Comrade Duch had disappeared. Over a decade of working in Cambodia, photographer Nic Dunlop became obsessed with the idea of finding Duch. As the commandant of "S-21" prison, Duch could shed light on a secret and brutal world that had been sealed off to outsiders. Then, by chance, he came face to face with him. The Lost Executioner describes a personal journey to the heart of the Khmer Rouge. It is an attempt to find out what actually happened in Pol Pot's Cambodia and why; to understand how a seemingly peaceful nation could give birth to one of the most bloodthirsty revolutions in modern history.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
The most important human rights book of the year? December 10, 2005
Daniel Dennis (Brisbane, Queensland Australia)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
It takes a special writer to bring light to an issue of seemingly impenetrable horror. A young Irish photographer has done it in this superb debut. Pol Pot's frenzied demolition of Cambodia in 1975-79 has been documented from within(The Stones Cry Out, Stay Alive My Son) and by outsiders (Year Zero, S 21). What more could be said?
"The Lost Executioner" takes the form of a terrifying detective narrative. The young author with a picture in his pocket has an obsession - to find Cambodia's Himmler in the chaos of the country he helped to terrorize. In striking prose that reveals the photographer behind the pen (his descriptive powers are at their best rendering faces and images of rural life) the writer takes us deep into the heart and mind of Cambodia, its paralyzing paradoxes, and the west's policy swings between breathtaking cynicism and incompetent pity. Like Shelley's mariner, Nic Dunlop fixes us with an amazing tale and sets our sights clearly on what should be done. To read his book is to be challenged anew of our obligations to the family of man.
Like the best books, Nic Dunlp's "The Lost Executioner" relates much of what is known but makes us see it in a new light
This splendid and courageous book just might help re-awaken international opinion to re-consider our obligations to Cambodia.
 Very Committed Author April 10, 2006
William A. Sowka Jr. (Woodstock , CT. USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Needless to say, the tragedies depicted in this book were very disturbing. Having read much on the genocide in Rwanda, I couldn't help making comparisons. Sadly, I saw too many similarities and my response goes from shock to curiosity. To his credit, Dunlop did not exploit the gruesomeness of the torture and killings. He was very respectful toward people, families, and to Cambodia as a whole. The story's focus was primarily on one member of the Khmer Rouge known as Comrade Duch who headed a prison with a nortorious reputation for committing brutal crimes against humanity. This focus gave Dunlop a unique twist to his book, however, the story was often made confusing. Not only did Dunlop fail to provide adequate historical background to the story, but even paragraph to paragraph the story was not easy to follow. The writing did not flow as easliy as I would have liked. I found myself back tracking a bit to get the story straight. Another interesting twist Dunlop makes was to question how such atrocities as this occur. He gives some thought to the dangers of Buddhism and socialism but I would have loved him to expound on these thoughts a little more. Nevertheless we see that the problem is multidimensional and not just political. He also exposes the failures of the U.N.(suprise,suprise) and of the U.S., but again, his argument is not made clearly or in detail. Despite some of my criticism of Nic Dunlop's writing, I was extremely impressed by his diligence, his committment, his honesty, and his persistence. He gets 5 stars for character and is to be applauded for this work.
a very well-written and horrifying history October 13, 2005
Will De Vere (Melbourne, Australia)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Kaing Guek Eav was a kind, dedicated and respected high school teacher who became Pol Pot's most vicious executioner, Comrade Duch, and the commandant of the nightmarish Tuol Sleng prison; so fanatical, in fact, that he murdered two of his own teachers and mentors. This is a deeply shocking and absorbing history of the Khmer Rouge horror and should be read by everyone who is interested in Asian history.
Much of it is almost impossible to believe; Dunlop's description of the deserted Phnom Penh is haunting.
Comrade Duch unmasked April 30, 2006
AndyB (UK)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Nic Dunlop's first-rate detective story on the trail of Pol Pot's chief executioner, the notorious Comrade Duch, is a fascinating journey into Cambodia's recent bloody history. Through a series of testimonies by Duch's family members and people who knew him, Dunlop builds up a compelling picture of this former teacher turned mass murderer, whilst also giving us a running commentary on the development of the Khmer Rouge organisation through the eyes of former cadre such as Sokheang, now a human rights investigator though formerly a Khmer Rouge sympathiser.
The Lost Executioner is Dunlop's first book; he's primarily a photographer who became obsessed with S-21, known to many as Tuol Sleng, and its commandant, Comrade Duch. He even kept a photo of Duch in his pocket. By an astonishing stroke of luck, Dunlop met the man responsible for the deaths of more than 20,000 people, in Samlaut, a small town in northwest Cambodia in 1999 and exposed him with the help of Nate Thayer and the Far Eastern Economic Review, leading to his arrest and detention, awaiting trial. Dunlop's subsequent investigations and interviews now provide us with a great wealth of detail about Duch's life before, during and after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror though ultimately the reason for Duch's transformation into a brutal killer remains an unexplained puzzle. In a perverse twist, Duch converted to Christianity, had worked for an American charity, was living under a new identity and had returned to teaching before his unmasking. The book is written in an easy to follow though powerful narrative and I recommend The Lost Executioner to anyone seeking to delve into the morass that is Cambodia's recent past. It's a remarkable and revealing story.
Ordinary people can commit demonic acts (R.K. Lifton) May 31, 2008
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Nick Hornby poses the all important questions of how a vision of a better world can turn into bottomless evil, and how seemingly ordinary men can become mass murderers.
The ideological fundamentalists at the very top of the Red Khmer movement had a vision and a plan for the creation of heaven on earth (`the envy of the world'), but only for the 'good' soldiers. All the 'bad' ones, even (pregnant) women, children and babies, had to be simply murdered. Their utopia was a world of self-sacrifice, with no traces of individuality, no individual thought, no love (segregation of men and women), no foreign things, no towns, no money, no schools, no holidays.
The mass murdering was considered as an act of purification. It turned into a terrible real nightmare for the good and the bad. Everybody came to live in constant fear for their lives, acted in panic, told only what people wanted to hear and did what they were told to do. It was a system of paranoia, terror, constant surveillance and lies.
The Tuol Sleng prison became the heart of the movement, the centre of security, a symbol for a whole society as a slaughterhouse. Under torture people named names of innocent `spies', who in their turn named names, until ... `If the Organization arrests everybody, who will be left to make a revolution?'
After 4 years, the suspicions of conspiracies had killed more than three-quarters of the original Central Committee.
The answer to Nick Hornby's question is Duch, the Commander of the S-21 prison, a fundamentalist, a cold executioner of the orders of his superiors, a good father for his children, but living in constant fear for his own life, obsessed by the 'enemies' within, behaving irrationally, but enjoying his role as `butcher' for the creation of utopia.
As D. Chandler quotes at the end of his moving book `Voices from S-21', `ordinary people can commit demonic acts'. This potential is in all of us.
External facts
We should not forget the sometimes disturbing factors behind the rise to power, the violence and the stability of the Red Khmer regime.
Its Kampuchean enemies of the Lon Nol dictatorship were themselves extremely violent: 'Villages were burned and thousands were killed. Heads were mounted on stakes.'
Red Khmer guerillas were trained by British secret services.
The US secretly bombed Kampuchea during the Vietnam War driving the peasants into the arms of the Red Khmers.
And ultimately, nearly all governments of the world, the US, China, the Soviet Union, Great-Britain, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, made of Kampuchea the front line of the Cold War.
Nick Hornby wrote a frightening book, which shows what human beings are capable of doing with other members of their species.
I also highly recommend the works of D. Chandler and the documentary by Rithy Panh `S-21'.
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