'To keep you is no benefit, to kill you is no loss'

Khmer Rouge motto

In 1977, young diplomat Ouk Ket was recalled to Cambodia 'to get educated to better fulfil [his] responsibilities'. Left behind in Paris were his French wife, Martine, and their two young children, Neary and Mackara; they never saw him again. Through this single family's tragedy, Carmichael explores the infamous S-21 prison, the trial of its commander and Cambodia's years of terror.

Under the Khmer Rouge, between 1975 and 1979, an estimated two million people, or one in every four Cambodians, died or were killed. More than 12,000 of them were tortured prior to their execution in Tuol Sleng prison, better known today by its codename S-21.

In describing the quest over many years of Martine and Neary to learn what had happened to their husband and father, and through the lens of the war crimes trial of Comrade Duch, When the Clouds Fell from the Sky illuminates not only the tragedy of a nation, but also the fundamental limitations of international justice.

'Crisply written, elegantly constructed and thoroughly researched . . . a perceptive, often heart-breaking book'
David Chandler, author of Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison

'A beautifully written book that does a masterful job weaving the history of the Khmer Rouge tribunal with a more personal story of human tragedy and redemption'
Peter Maguire, author of Law and War, Facing Death in Cambodia and Thai Stick.

'Arguably the most vivid and terrifying literary portrait of the prison to date'
Phnom Penh Post