AVAILABLE NOW · FROM SIMON & SCHUSTER
✿ 2013 Book of the Year Indies Choice Award Finalist
✿ New York Times Bestseller
✿ New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
✿ Kirkus Best Fiction of 2012 Selection
✿ Christian Science Monitor 10 Best Fiction Books of 2012
✿ Indie Next List Pick and Indie Bestseller
✿ People Magazine People’s Pick
✿ Columbus Dispatch Best Books of 2012 Selection
✿ Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 Fiction Nominee
✿ Newsweek / Daily Beast Hot Reads Selection
✿ O, The Oprah Magazine Summer Reading List Selection
✿ Parade Magazine Parade Pick
✿ Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
✿ Amazon Best Books of the Month Editor’s Pick
✿ Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choice
✿ Book Expo America 2012 Editor’s Buzz Panel Selection
For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.
Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.
