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In The Shadow Of The Banyan

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Raami is a seven year old girl living happily with her extended family in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, when a revolutionary group called the Khmer Rouge uproot them from everything. Forced out of the capital, Raami and her family are moved from village to village, place to place, brutalised everywhere they go. They are separated from loved ones and forced to work all hours on massive construction projects doomed to failure. Private cooking is banned and farmers made to plant rice out of season, leading to mass starvation and disease. Fear is everywhere as the Khmer Rouge are on the hunt for enemies and Raami must hide her connections to the disposed royal family. One by one, Raami's family members succumb to death and Raami has to fight for even the smallest chance of survival in an increasingly violent world.

In the Shadow of the Banyan makes grim reading at times. The author grew up in the killing fields and explains in the afterword that Raami doesn't go through anything that she herself didn't experience as a child. And there's so much suffering in this book - murder, starvation, exhaustion, disease, horror, fear, all of it is there. Ratner doesn't shy away from the darker side of Cambodian history, but puts it all there on the page and it's impossible as a reader to not feel completely horrified at the atrocities. I've read about genocides and the Chinese 'Great Leap Forward' (which the history in this book reminded me of), but it's rare to come across such a hard-hitting account of tragedy as this. Raami is so relatable that you almost feel as though you are suffering alongside her.

But despite all of this, Ratner somehow manages to balance suffering with enough hope and beauty to make the story bearable. There are glimpses of people still caring for each other, of a young boy collecting snails to feed to his starving sister, of Raami's mother giving up her portion of food so Raami can stay alive, of the kindness of strangers. Cambodia itself is described in lush, colourful terms that also help to give the book some balance; the green rice paddies, bright flowers and in the beginning, the jewel coloured saris of the women and saffron robes of the monks. Even though the events of the book are horrific, you can sense the love Ratner has for Cambodia.

Choosing to narrate the book through the eyes of a seven year old child was always going to be a risk and at times Raami does seem too knowing, especially concerning the relationships between adult family members and their thought processes. But on the other hand it mirrors the naivety of the reader and allows Ratner to tell the story without getting bogged down in politics, it's just a human story. Raami is forced to grow up quickly through the book and the contrast between her character in the beginning and at the end is realistic. From the beginning, I was completely invested in Raami as a character and desperate for her to find some happiness.

I loved In the Shadow of the Banyan. It may cover a difficult topic but it's an important one for us as human beings and Ratner's writing is simply beautiful. Highly recommended.

"I had learned not to be afraid of owls or other night creatures. Animals are not like people. If you leave them alone, they won't hurt you. But people will, even if you've done no wrong. They hurt you with their guns, their words, their lies and broken promises, their sorrow."

"In The Shadow of the Banyan," is a novel about a young girl called Raami, essentially based on the author Vaddey Ratner's life during the Khymer Rouge regime in Cambodia over four years. It has been compared to books such as The Other Hand, Half of a Yellow Sun and The Kite Runner; however I found this the most disturbing and depressing of all of these, perhaps because I knew so little of the genocide in Cambodia.

The main problem I have with this book is that it is told from a seven-year-old girl's perspective yet it does not read like that, particularly at the beginning of the story. It is far too mature when compared to say, five-year-old Jack in Room, and whilst I understand that Raami's voice will be somewhat mature due to her royal upbringing, the vocabulary and her analysis of situations just didn't ring true.

I also found this a very slow read as there is a lot of description of lesser events and then many brutally quick deaths. It is so harrowing that I found it was difficult to digest more than a chapter or two in one sitting. I also found that the majority of the characters were very under-developed and I believe it would have read better as a memoir to give the feeling of the emotions of the people more. Overall, Ratner's debut was difficult to get through and could have been so much better, however I am glad tp have read it, if only as a history lesson.

Raami is just seven when civil war breaks out in Cambodia. Torn from her privileged life as a `princess' in a royal family, she is forced into exile with her family, facing hard labour, fear and loss.

Ratner, in an afterword, explains that Raami is a fictionalised version of herself and that this is, effectively, a novelised version of the true story of her life from the age of seven till about twelve, when the Khmer Rouge fled Cambodia in the face of Vietnamese communists.

There is much that is good about this book: the sense of a loving family, Raami's responses to the poetry and mythology of Cambodia as well as her father's stories which sustain her, and all of these bathe the book in a kind of elegiac, golden light.

At the same time, however, I found myself a bit resistant to the erasure of Cambodian politics from the story: the genocide of the Khmer Rouge was, unquestionably, a crime against humanity, and yet - like other forms of south-east Asian `communism' - it didn't spring from nowhere. French colonialism, a monarchical regime based on hierarchy, privilege and superiority in which Raami's own family were implicated (e.g. Tata describes the revolutionaries as `barbarians... bred in the jungle'), created the essential preconditions for the revolution which gave the Khmer Rouge their mercifully brief years of power. Raami's time, for example, working in the rice paddy fields came as a shock to her, as it would to most of us, but we shouldn't forget that that was the expected life of generations of Cambodian `peasants', including children, upon which the colonial, imperial and royalist regimes were built: hard labour for Raami was the normal lifestyle for the majority of Cambodia's rural population.

So this is a lovingly written book which recreates a kind of lost, golden world of Raami's childhood before the revolution. It works well on an individual scale where we can sympathise with this lovely family faced with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, and can be glad that the author found refuge in America - but given Raami's (and the author's) royal status, it does present a limited view of the political complexities of Cambodia. There are other stories to be told, of the Cambodian children of Raami's age who didn't have her education, didn't live in her house full of servants, or enjoy her rich and luxurious life-style, which would complicate the story told here.

My knowledge of Cambodian history and the role of the Khmer Rouge is rather limited, based on viewing the excellent but harrowing film, The Killing Fields when I was 20. I relish the opportunity to discover the history and culture of other countries through fiction and In the Shadow of the Banyan has the added kudos of having an author who experienced these desperate times first-hand.

The author allows us to view the horrors of civil war up close but filters the more gruesome aspects by using a very young narrator, the seven year old Raami who has been swept from a life of privilege in an aristocratic family to the grass roots of a peasant existence. The language is so elegant and beautiful, very lyrical at times, allowing the reader to see the beauty and grace of the humans at the centre of this dreadful war. Ironically it is the exquisite nature of the prose which causes this to be a good but not great read for me as I just can't get past the fact that the narrator is only 7 years old yet capable of such eloquence. Maybe it's because I have young children myself but it seems incongruous for such a young child to express herself in such a consistently lyrical manner.

Having said that, it is an extremely moving read and a very good introduction to the troubled history of a country which, in my opinion, has been rather overlooked by the world of literature.

Author Vaddey Ratner has revisited her life-changing childhood experiences growing up in Cambodia to create this fictionalized tale that incorporates much of what actually happened to her.

The story is narrated throughout by a young girl named Raami, who is seven-years-old when we first meet her. She enjoys a happy, priviledged life with her wealthy, well-connected family, her mother and father, little sister, and other relations and servants of the family. Then one day her father comes home with the news that in the capital, Phnom Penh, civil war has begun. Suddenly life changes for the family, fleeing their home and forced into the countryside with thousands of others, with no idea of where they are being taken, or what will happen to them. The family endures an enormous amount of hardship, sadness, separation and loss over the next four years.

I found this tale very moving, and I learned about a place and a period in history that I knew very little about. Seeing these events and experiencing them through the eyes of a child gives a very particular perspective on things. Raami is an insightful observer, but at times it is beyond her to comprehend this world. As one of relatives tells her: `The problem with being seven - I remember myself at that age - is that you're aware of so much, and yet you understand so little. So you imagine the worst.'

Raami is forced to grow up fast as a result of what she endures. Worked almost to death in the fields, scrabbling desperately for any food that is available, clinging to the few loved ones that remain around her, she lives through a heartbreaking, horrific time and witnesses so much cruelty and pain for one so young.

Nature reflects the condition of the people's lives, toiling day after day, clearing the earth, under the constant guard of the Revolutionary soldiers. The language conveys the affliction felt by them all: `It was a sick sky. A sky burning with welts. Angry and red. The colors of rotting flesh, of dying and death, of one heaving last breath.'

Throughout all of this, Raami thinks often of her beloved father, a gentle man, a prince and a poet, and of the stories he used to tell her. He taught her of the power of words to transcend and transform even the worst situations: `Words, you see,' he said, looking at me again, `allow us to make permanent what is essentially transient. Turn a world filled with injustice and hurt into a place that is beautiful and lyrical. Even if only on paper.'

They meant so much to her, and now, as she faces the lowest points of her short life so far, these stories, legends from the past, are what she recalls to bring her through the darkest moments.

A beautiful and captivating debut novel from a first-hand witness of the times.

This is the debut novel of Vaddey Ratner and is partly biographical. She was five years old when the Khmer Rouge stormed to power in Cambodia (renamed Kampuchea) in 1975. She endured four years under their brutal regime before she and her mother managed to escape. This tells the story of a seven year old girl Raami who came from a privileged background, her father being a Prince and a poet of renown. She was used to the beautiful things in life and had led a charmed one by many standards, even having servants.

The Khmer Rouge were initially welcomed with garlands and smiles, but soon became clear that they brought with them an ideology that would mean turning the clock back to year zero. All intellectuals were enemies of the revolution, all former power brokers were too and all had to be rooted out and destroyed; wearing glasses was a sign of intellectualism and could mean death. Raami and her extended family tried to get away, but at each turn they faced more hostility, brutality, depravation and death. Raami had suffered Polio as a child and needed a brace to walk properly; even that was seen as a `machine' and thrown into the mighty Mekong River. The brutality of the regime is told through the eyes of a child but has so much more impact because of it and genuinely moved me on more than one occasion. I finished this book some time ago but wanted to think on it before writing this. Vaddey Ratner has clearly used her own experiences and that must have been heart rending what she has also done is bring beauty to the darkness of those terrible times.

She writes in an assured, elegant and yet homely and down to earth way. She relates the proverbs and sayings of her native Cambodia and does so in a way that we can relate to and by doing adds more depth to her story.

I could say good things about this all day, but suffice to say this is one of the most moving and beautifully crafted books I have ever read, I just did not want it to end, but when it did I just thought how much more I would get on a subsequent read, this is one I am not lending out as I know it would not be returned - simply stunning.

Based in Cambodia just before the Khymer Rouge entered Phnom Penh we are told of Raami , a seven year old girl, privileged lifestyle.
The book is written from the eyes and experiences of a seven year old child. This is a brave viewpoint rather than the easier viewpoint of an adult.
The family is shunted from village to village and the cruelty of resisting the soldiers of the Khymer Rouge. The sheer terror of not knowing what will come next for the family together with the indifference of the soldiers runs through and through the book.

The phrase used is `Rooted, yanked and planted' to convey the utter helplessness of the family treated as well useless plants.
Tales of the Khymer Rouge abound- planting rice outside the planting season with the disastrous but expected results.

This is a hard book the range of feelings experienced by the reader with scenes such as where the father offers himself to the Khymer Rouge soldiers knowing full well that his death will follow but hoping against hope that his family will live is heartbreaking to say the least.
There are of course other scenes where humanity shines against this backdrop of terror. The Mother sacrificing her food so that Rami may eat is a plight that we, as parents, hope that our children will never have to face.
This is a book that will tear your heart strings and make you cry but deserves to read so that this may never happen again.
We really have it easy in Great Britain. It's often good to be reminded of it.

Recommended.

In this autobiographical novel, author Vaddey Ratner has created a main character and family so vibrant that every reader will feel transported to Cambodia, where s/he then shares every aspect of these characters' lives and hopes for the future. Telling the story is Raami, an engaging seven-year-old from a large and loving Phnom Penh family. Together they inhabit a lush, lovely, and endlessly fascinating natural world which offers constant visual surprises and inspires the stories, tales, and poems Raami relates here. Many of these poems and stories have been written by her father, a man she adores, and they infuse her whole life with the magic and beauty of words, offering hope and inspiration even through the atrocities she eventually witnesses.

Raami's family, like the author's, is descended from royalty, and when the Khmer Rouge take over Phnom Penh, her father is, not, at first, very worried. He has always disliked the privileges bestowed upon royalty simply because of their birth, and he hopes that the Khmer will institute democracy. When it becomes obvious that this is not going to happen, her father also realizes that the Khmer will first arrest the country's wealthy and the educated, and he knows he will be a prime target. Anyone who can read becomes suspect, and people quickly learn to break their eyeglasses and bury them, since they are a signal that their wearers are educated. Her mother pretends to be a servant, and Raami pretends she can neither read nor write.

Directed by revolutionary officers and moved from village to village at the whim of the Khmer, the family performs menial labor as they try to hide their background, at one point helping to build an enormous dirt embankment along a river to prevent flooding during monsoons. Food is almost non-existent, and people eat insects and small fish, if they can find them. Babies die because mothers are too emaciated to supply milk, and disease is rampant. Only the revolutionaries have enough rice. Even under these circumstances, however, Raami remembers the stories from her father, looks for signs of new life in nature as he has taught her, and refuses to give in. It is not until the Vietnamese begin to attack the Khmer, that many revolutionaries in rural areas abandon their positions, and some signs of hope arise for Raami and those in her camp. Eventually, some take advantage of the lack of organization and head west for Thailand.

Presenting her own autobiography as a novel so that she can compress and condense many of the events that occur between 1975 and 1979, while also combining several real characters into composites, the author says in her "Conversation" at the end of the novel, that Raami's experience parallels her own. "There's not an ordeal she faces that I myself didn't confront in one way or another," and though there are minor details which differ from reality, Vaddey Ratner, like Raami, "always had faith in people," a faith which allowed her to survive war-time horrors for four terrifying years and become stronger in the process. Ultimately, Ratner's alterego Raami imagines herself flying, her spirit connecting with the past, present, and future. Transforming suffering into art, Vaddey Ratner brings to life those universal qualities that enable strong people to survive even the most horrific circumstances, regardless of time or place.

I travelled to Cambodia a few years ago: if Thailand is the land of smiles, Cambodia is the land of smiles that are twice as wide. But the country's recent history - a third of the population obliterated by the Khmer Rouge - is still very near the surface. This wonderful book tells the little told story in a way that's accessible to fiction readers, but is really a fictionalised memoir of the author's own early life. I have to say it absolutely blew me away.

Raami is seven, living in Phnom Penh with her aristrocratic family, when the Khmer Rouge gain precedence. So begins the family's forced migration from place to place, with brutal conditions contrasted with moments of real human kindness. The detail is horrifying - the inhuman cruelty, the daily struggle for food that makes a water beetle a real prize, the backbreaking work on building a barrier to hold back the monsoon waters, the repeated denial of self to secure simple survival.

The writing style is matter-of-fact and unemotional - writing from Raami's limited viewpoint really worked for me - but also lyrical and descriptive, with scenes of incredible beauty (the mist in the temple before her father's departure will stay with me for a long time). As horror follows horror, the simple, factual observation and unemotional telling just increase the impact on the reader.

Everyone should read this book. It's really well overdue for Cambodia to get some of the spotlight - this was the 1970s and we shamefully know so little. But it's also a wonderful piece of writing. At its heart is a confused and frightened child, trying to make sense of the inexplicable, and just wanting the stability and security of her family. Very highly recommended, and will stay with me for a long time.

In the Shadow of the Banyan is the semi-autobiographical story of an infant princess caught up in the Khmer Rouge revolution in Cambodia in 1975.

The Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia was one of the most devastating periods of history. During their three years, eight months of power, Cambodia effectively sealed itself off from the outside world, rejected money, machinery and education, and set out to recreate an agricultural utopia. Urban Cambodians were evacuated from towns and cities and relocated to rural areas - hosted by communities that were ill equipped to deal with the influx of population. Anyone who could read; anyone who wore glasses; anyone who looked foreign; anyone who had travelled abroad; anyone who could drive - they were all exterminated. Anyone who expressed dissatisfaction - exterminated. Anyone who tried to retain personal possessions - exterminated. By the end, when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in a humanitarian relief effort, a third of the population was dead and the rest were starving.

This much is common knowledge.

What is not so widely considered is the process by which this came about. What was life actually like under the Khmer Rouge. Visitors to Cambodia will find that people want to talk about their personal experiences; they want to convey the humanity and the inhumanity of daily life. But most visitors just want to see the skulls.

Vaddey Ratner's story is therefore not just moving but also important. As well as the destruction, she depicts a struggle for survival; she depicts a hope borne of human kindness. Through the eyes of young Raami, we see the importance of hiding a privileged background and the consequences of forgetting to do so. We see a child caught up in an adult world, forced to grow up very fast. But we also see much kindness. We see the love of some of the peasants Raami encounters. We see the idealism of some of the Khmer Rouge. We see the innocence of some of the revolutionary soldiers - some just boys who joined the cause because it was easier to carry a gun than to dig the fields.

The story is woven with folk tales and allegory - at times quite obscure. Some may object that this is not an authentic voice of a small child, but the novel doesn't pretend to be. It is memoir rather than contemporaneous writing. The novel is compelling, vital and innocent. There is space for trust, jealousy, pity and hope mixed in with the grit. The depiction of Cambodia is very credible. Most of all, the novel shows us life, not just death.

Given that this first novel is based on autobiography, it is difficult to know where Vaddey Ratner will go next. But, wherever it is, I will gladly go too.