The Interpreter of Memories From The Killing Fields

By Elizabeth Becker

So how did Dith Pran, a sophisticated journalist, survive when the Khmer Rouge was rooting out and killing most intellectuals?

A Cambodian banker I know survived by playing the village idiot. Pran survived by reading character. His brilliance as a journalist for figuring out chaotic situations in war was critical during the revolution. He, of course, hid his background, but he read people the way he had read all of us, foreigner and Cambodian alike. He knew what we were good for and where we were hopeless. During the Khmer Rouge revolution, he had to rely on those finely honed instincts to survive.

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