This book by Amitav Ghosh was published right around the same time as the death of Pol Pot. The news of the death brought back to the minds of the public the images of the ruthless extermination of one fourth of the population of Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 through 1979. Even with the national consciousness of the East Asian countries in India, news of the death made the front page. Ironically, only about twenty people were in attendance at the funeral of the man that was the mastermind behind the most methodical insolvencies of the country’s whole middle class.
However, the statistics and facts are left to the newspapers. With an understanding of the individual personal lives, Amitav Ghosh writes an awe-inspiring human account by combining stories from real survivors from Cambodia who are coping with the past to rebuild their lives.
Each book by Amitav Ghosh is somewhat different from the one before it. In the book Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma, Amitav Ghosh weaves together the political reportage, history, travel and cultural commentary into each other, the result ruminates on pain, power, freedom and violence. More geographies and histories are brought to life in a way to which the reader can relate through this work.