The reader does not even need to give three attempts to guess what historical period will be told in a novel about Cambodia. Of course, 1975-1979. You can also tell what the text will be about without even touching the book: the Khmer Rouge came and everyone felt very bad, even if it wasn't super before.
"In the shadow of the Banyan Tree "is just the twin brother of the more famous story" First they killed my father: Memories of a Daughter of Cambodia " by Lun Un and the film of the same name by Angelina Jolie, if you have read one thing or at least watched the film, consider that you have read both and close this topic.
My main complaint about "In the Shadow of the Banyan Tree" is only that this book is very weak as an artistic one, in fact, Vad Ratner writes down his own memories trying to somehow brighten them up with artistic fiction, and he also closes a gap where memory has failed.
Everything is flat to the extreme, the image of the father is so idealized that you inadvertently wonder if the younger prince of Cambodia was the new Buddha, if allegories or metaphors are introduced into the text, then the author is only enough for one sentence, and then she already says everything, like "you understand, you understand, this story is not just like that, this is an allegorical story about our family, here a bird is a war.
One daughter is me, the second is my younger sister," etc. It is clear that the Khmers here are bad guys, and the royal family are angels in the flesh, who only dreamed of a democratic future for their beloved Cambodia, and with them it was so unfair, they already had to exchange gold bracelets from the feet of their youngest daughter for rice!
It is difficult for me to imagine that Vad Ratner will later become the author of some book that has nothing to do with what her family went through (and she went through the same thing as millions of Cambodians, only the fall was more painful, because initially the royal family was too high), and therefore, in my opinion, it would be much more logical not to claim the title of a novelist, but simply to release an autobiographical book, telling in it about how in a few years there was nothing left of the family of the non-hereditary prince Sisovat, once again reminding.
How pointless was the whole story with Kampuchea, from which Cambodia has not yet recovered. I didn't know anything about Ratner and her family when I started "In the Shadow of the Banyan Tree", but the lack of distance between the seven-year-old heroine and the author of the novel is visible to the naked eye in this case, so when I finally got to the afterword, in which Ratner laid out all the cards on the table, I was absolutely not surprised by what I read.
I don't know, of course, what "In the shadow of the Banyan Tree" looks like in the original, but in the Russian translation, this book does not stand out stylistically from hundreds of similar stories from the first person. Intentionally simplified syntax, small paragraphs, no bright spots and distinctive features.
I have read books written in exactly the same language about a girl who escaped from North Korea, and about a Jewish girl who hid in the Krakow sewer from the Nazis. The abstract, by the way, promised that the text would contain national Cambodian legends and legends that, purely theoretically, could somehow decorate the narrative, and yes, they were, I remember exactly three pieces, but they reminded me more of humorous mocking "parables" in which the idea of enlightenment is belittled.
Four hundred pages about the life of ordinary Cambodians during the reign of the Khmer Rouge prompted me to think about something completely different: here, often in books and films, we are shown such ideal men who are ready to shoot themselves in the head for the sake of their family, but do the creators of such images think that they, these heroes, can be perceived completely differently, as people who give up, choose death.
Tiding behind different "for", while their family remains to survive in difficult conditions, without the main breadwinner and defender? Do highly moral and altruistic men think that their spouse will continue to drag several children alone, when she herself has nothing to eat? In short, the Tiger Prince did not become an ideal husband and father for me, no matter how hard Ratner tried.
I will not recommend the book, there is nothing catchy in it, only white threads sticking out in all directions and capital truths. In addition, the first half is also boring: it is necessary to somehow immediately offer readers a lot of suffering, and even the relative well-being of the characters puts them to sleep.
547.807 SRY