In the Shadow of the Banyan

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience. ~http://www.vaddeyratner.com

“In the Shadow of the Banyan is one of the most extraordinary and beautiful acts of storytelling I have ever encountered. . . This book pulls off the unsettling feat of being—at the same time—utterly heartbreaking and impossibly beautiful. There are moments in this story that are among the most powerful in literature. This is a masterpiecethat takes us to the highs and lows of what human beings can do in this life, and it leaves us, correspondingly, both humbled and ennobled.”

—Chris Cleave, author of Little Bee


“Full of beauty, even joy. . . What is remarkable, and honorable, here is the absence of anger, and the capacity—seemingly infinite—for empathy.”

—Ligaya Mishan, New York Times Book Review


“Poetry in prose... a fascinating, moving work that offers a powerful leitmotif of optimism.”
—Sholto Byrnes, The Independent on Sunday (UK)