Crossing Three Wildernesses
by U Sam Oeur
(with Ken McCullough)

Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1-56689-167-1

Celebrated poet U Sam Oeur delivers a breathtaking and haunting portrait of Cambodia from his near-idyllic boyhood, to his years as a government official, to the devastating takeover of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the subsequent "liberation" of Cambodia by the Vietnamese. Having been educated in the United States and a proponent of democracy, Oeur was forced to feign illiteracy in order to survive the killing fields and their aftermath. A witness personally touched by the three wildernesses — death by execution, death by disease, and death by starvation — Oeur emerged from the experience with his hope for peace, freedom, and the power of literature unshaken. This remarkable memoir is a testament to the horrors of genocide and the strength of the human spirit.

U Sam Oeur

U Sam Oeur grew up in a Cambodian farming family. After studying in the US, he served in the Cambodian government, becoming part of the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations. When Pol Pot assumed power in 1975, Oeur, along with his wife and son, survived the killing fields while feigning illiteracy in six forced-labor camps. A devout Buddhist, Oeur is the author of the acclaimed bilingual collection of poems Sacred Vows. He now lives in Texas where he translates the poems of Walt Whitman into Khmer.

Above text from publisher's website: coffeehousepress.org

Read a review of this book by Janet Brown, one of the judges for the 2006 Kiriyama Prize nonfiction panel, in Pacific Rim Voices' WaterBridge Review.