Praise for THREE DAYS IN PHNOM PENH :

"Grappling with the enormity of Cambodia’s trauma, Nishikanta Verma embarks on a quest for a greater understanding of one of the worst crimes of the 20th century. This search has resulted in this deeply heartfelt and compassionate account of his journey to Cambodia and the heart of the Khmer Rouge killing machine. A passionate story of one man’s quest for the truth."

Nic Dunlop
Author of ‘The Lost Executioner' - A Story of the Khmer Rouge (Winner of the Johns Hopkins Award for Excellence in International Journalism)

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Between 17 April 1975 and 7 January 1979, the Kingdom of Cambodia was annihilated, with a third of Cambodia's population dying as a result of the policies and actions of the Khmer Rouge. The survivors were either refugees in their own obliterated country or were strung out along vast refugee camps on the border with Thailand, without homes, families, money and food,
Cambodia had, for all practical purposes, ended.

But numbers do not do justice to the loss that Cambodia suffered. Included in the dead were all of Cambodia's educated people, all its keepers of tradition, all of its teachers, and, in a country that had been Theravada Buddhist for centuries, almost all of its monks, with its Buddhist temples turned into prisons, its schools into torture centres, and its countryside into killing fields, quite literally.

While the rise of the Khmer Rouge, the origins of Pol Pot, the political tightrope walking by Sihanouk or the influences of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Ho Chin Minh are fascinating subjects in themselves, Cambodia, for me, was primarily a human story and one that was not, it seemed to me, or at least to me, very well known.

After all, it was a movie - The Killing Fields - that first shed light on Cambodia's torment and for many years, that movie remained the only reference point for lay people. Its star actor, Dr Haing Ngor had himself survived the Khmer Rouge and won an Oscar for his role playing another survivor in the movie. A few years later, he would write the account of his life and the book became the launching pad for my first trip to Cambodia and then, a lifelong fascination for Cambodia - its people, its history and the many facets of its beguiling culture.

Three Days in Phnom Penh is an account of my first trip to Cambodia and of the reasons for that trip, a journey born out of deep anguish but ultimately one that became a meditative three day journey of wonder. The book took many years to write and is the result of many starts and stops, edits and re-edits as I struggled to fit a travelogue with contextual references to what I experienced in the city.

Over the years, I met a few Cambodians online or in person, as well as expatriates or foreigners who had spent time in Cambodia. It was a profound privilege to hear their stories.

This book is dedicated to all of them.