When the Clouds Fell from the Sky

An outstanding book of astonishing power . . . One finishes it with an ache in the heart

JON SWAIN, writer and foreign correspondent, author of River of Time

Through a profoundly moving tale that weaves together the connected stories of a victim, his surviving family, and members of the regime, Robert Carmichael brings us into the heart of the darkness that took over Cambodia, bringing it alive in the way no mere statistics can. Ive not seen a comparable book about these horrors
ADAM HOCHSCHILD, award-winning author of King Leopolds Ghost

The intimate and heartbreaking story of the disappearance of one man, and the decades of suffering that followed as his family searched for answers
SETH MYDANS, former Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times

In 1977, Neary was two years old and living in Paris when her father Ouk Ket, a Cambodian diplomat, was recalled home to get educated to better fulfil [his] responsibilities. It was to be many years before Neary and her mother Martine were finally able to establish what had happened to Ket, their father and husband.

In this moving memoir, through a tragedy that engulfs a single family, journalist Robert Carmichael, explores with great sensitivity Phnom Penhs infamous S-21 prison and its commander, Comrade Duch, and Cambodias descent into terror.

During the Khmer Rouges four-year reign of terror, two million people died in Cambodia. In telling the moving story of the quest of two women to learn the fate of their husband and father, Tell Me What Happened to My Father illuminates the tragedy of a nation.