Outskirts Press, INC.

A Boy Escaped from Hell

Based on a true story, A Boy Escaped from Hell offers a glimpse of the pain and suffering the Cambodian people endured under the oppression of Pol Pot’s communist regime. For centuries, Cambodia has been a small but thriving country in a corner of Southeast Asia, but it became a living hell after the Cambodian Civil War in 1975. Pol Pot showed no mercy for his people, primarily focusing on cultivating more land and gradually compelling more and more people to do farm work. The new government shut down the city—closing businesses, public schools, and hospitals—and the Cambodian people were forced to work in wetlands to earn a few spoonfuls of rice. Under Pol Pot’s regime, many children and the elderly died of starvation, and many others died from disease and violence at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. The people knew they were in a desperate situation, but hope and help were just a dream. A Boy Escaped from Hell vividly describes one Cambodian boy’s childhood—a childhood filled with hunger and fear and backbreaking work. Separated from his family, Savorn M. Yang endured great physical and emotional hardship until at last he walked away from this dehumanizing world and into Khao I Dang, a refugee camp in Thailand. There, he spent four years in an orphanage before immigrating to the United States in 1984. This honest and harrowing account is Savorn M. Yang’s debut novel and the story of his life.