GU-Q to host book reading by Cambodian writer today

Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) will host a book-reading session for Cambodian writer Vaddey Ratner’s debut novel In the Shadow of the Banyan. Her book is a heart-rending true-life tale of human resilience amid horror, the redemptive promise of stories and the enduring power of love. Ratner poignantly relates her family’s four-year ordeal of separation, forced labour, starvation, execution and death.Published in June, the book has been selected as a finalist for the 2013 PEN/Hemingway Award and is a 2013 Indies Choice Book Award recipient.Gerd Nonneman, dean of GU-Q, said: “Vaddey Ratner’s work is a testament to the indomitable human spirit of survival amid adversity. It takes the reader through an extremely emotional journey against the historical backdrop of the revolution in Cambodia.”Ratner said, “I didn’t want simply to translate my family’s experience to a foreign audience; I wished to take the readers and replant them in the fertile ground I’d sprung from, to let them take root and sprout, and to see my world as their own. I wanted them to see Cambodia before it became synonymous with genocide, before it became the ‘killing fields’.”“Mine is a very personal story, but when I see how it resonates with others, I’m reminded how universal these themes of loss and perseverance and hope amid adversity really are,” she added.Ratner arrived in the US as a refugee in 1981 with no prior knowledge of English. In 1990, she went on to graduate as her high school class valedictorian in Minnesota. A summa cum laude graduate of Cornell University, she specialised in Southeast Asian history and literature. In recent years, she has travelled and lived in Cambodia and Southeast Asia, writing and researching. She currently lives in Potomac, Maryland (US), with her husband and daughter.The great-great granddaughter of the late 20th century King Sisowath of Cambodia, Ratner carries the official title of princess to this day. As a five-year old, she and her family were driven from their home in Phnom Penh when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975.