Veasna's family story is horrifying and incredible; he was born three days after the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia. He doesn't shy away from the atrocities of the following years, and shows how various members of his extended family managed to stay alive through their wits, resilience, and often outright luck. At times, the storytelling felt a bit scattered.

Veasna tries to relate the macro picture of what was happening in Phnom Penh, power struggles and purges among the Khmer Rouge, technicalities of how the refugee camps across the Thai border worked. He also told personal stories about his sprawling extended family; there were so many characters, some only appearing once or twice, that I had trouble keeping track of everyone. I wish the story had taken a tighter focus, either on the big picture of this period of Cambodian history, or a more intimate portrait of a few individual relatives, instead of trying to do everything at once.