I don't care how many years pass. The plight of Cambodia in the years following the Vietnam War is atrocious. For the Sake of All Living Things is a difficult read. It is powerful. Powerful like a 250 pound man of all muscle punching you in the gut. From scenes when the poorest of poor farmers have to pay tolls or "donations" just to travel a road to the vicious methods of torture and killing (chopsticks driven into the brain via the ears, bodies cleaved in two, children buried alive) I was wincing the entire time I read For the Sake of All Living Things. Through fear and violence the dominance of the Khmer Rouge spreads like a staining black oil throughout Cambodia, indoctrinating and training villagers to become killing machines for the Pol Pot regime. The methods of brainwashing are subtle and sly. As a historical fiction For the Sake of All Living Things reads like a nonfiction because of the appropriate terminology, government reports and various strategic maps. At times I was internally cringing to be American.
I read somewhere that For the Sake of All Living Things is actually the second book in a trilogy about the Vietnam war, Cambodia and the Pol Pot year zero cleansing, and veterans coming home. ( )

A very powerful book that shows the circumstances that led to the to takeover by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia/Kampuchea. Although fiction, it has the verisimilitude of reality as it covers the village recruitment and training of the killers in the Pol Pot regime that would terrorize Cambodia in the mid-70s. This is an excellent supplement to the film - " The Killing Fields." ( )

Brilliant account of the Pol Pot / Khmer Rouge years in Cambodia - VERY HARD to read: graphic descriptions of torture... But well-written, thoughtful expose of the reality of a most brutal regime. One cannot write convincingly of such a time and place without infusing one's writing with the reality of that kind of unimaginable violence. ( )