Cambodia

This country in southeast Asia, geographically located between Vietnam and Thailand, was the home of the Khmer Empire for several centuries, became a protectorate of France in the mid 1800s, and stayed that way until the 1950s. During the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, it was bombed and overrun by American and Vietnamese forces, who were then forced out by the Communist Khmer Rouge in the mid 1970s. This period, during the dictatorship of the Khmer Rouge and its ongoing war with Vietnam, is the period in which the novel is set.

The Khmer Rouge

In Cambodia in the mid 1970s, control of the government was seized by a military dictatorship. For half a decade, the Cambodian people suffered under the torturous rules and philosophies imposed by that government, until it was eventually ousted by Vietnamese authorities in the late 1970s.

Thailand, South Vietnam

These two...