Canterbury Tales Guesthouse

[Daveo]

Damage by John Lescroart.

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya...

When wild boy Ro Curtlee was convicted of rape and murder, the fallout against those responsible for putting him behind bars including detective Abe Glitsky was uncompromising. 
That's because the Curtlee family is among the Bay Area's most powerful billionaires. 
When a retrial ends in Ro's release, it appears his need for retribution isn't over. 
And this time, Glitsky's in the crosshairs.

[Daveo]

The Gate by Francois Bizot.

 

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French ethnologist Francois Bizot's The Gate offers a unique insight into the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

In 1971 Bizot was studying ancient Buddhist traditions and living with his Khmer partner and daughter in a small village in the environs of the Angkor temple complex.

The Khmer Rouge was fighting a guerilla war in rural Cambodia; during a routine visit to a nearby temple, Bizot and his two Khmer colleagues were captured by them and imprisoned deep in the Jungle on suspicion of working for the CIA.

On trial for his life, over the next three months Bizot developed a strong relationship with his captor, Comrade Douch, who would later become the Khmer Rouge's chief interrogator and commandant of the horrifying Tuol Sleng prison where thousands of captives were tortured prior to execution.

The portrait Bizot gives of the young schoolteacher turned revolutionary and their interaction is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying.

 

Finally freed after Douch had pleaded his case with the leadership, Bizot became the only Western captive of the Khmer Rouge ever to be released alive, but his story does not end there.

On his return to Phnom Penh, due to his fluency in Khmer, he was appointed interpreter between the occupying forces and the remaining western nationals holed up in the French embassy.

As the interlocutor at the eponymous gate, he relates with dreadful resignation the moment when the Khmer nationals in the compound were ordered out by the Khmer Rouge forces for "resettlement."

 

Bizot's is a touching and gripping account of one of the darkest moments in modern history and it is told with a unique voice.

As a Cambodian resident, a lover of Cambodia and a fluent Khmer speaker, Bizot shows an understanding of the prevailing mood in the country that other Western commentators have failed to capture effectively, while as a Western academic he is able to see the forces at work and how Cambodia fits into the bigger picture of Southeast Asian conflict.

What emerges is a tale of a land plunged into insanity and Bizot tells it like a eulogy for a dead friend and a confrontation of old demons.

The Gate is a stunning book and a must for anyone interested in this grim period of Asian history.

 

[Daveo]

The Quiet Game (Penn Cage 1) by Greg Iles.

 

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The first thriller in the No.1 bestselling series featuring Penn Cage: a prosecutor in a corrupt system, a husband whose wife has died and a father who must protect his daughter.

 

Natchez, Mississippi.

A city of old money and older sins.

A place where a thirty year-old crime lies buried, and everyone plays the quiet game.

But on man cannot stay silent.

 

Returning to his home town, former prosecuting attorney Penn Cage is stunned to discover that his father is being blackmailed over a decades old murder.

 

Negotiating the town’s undercurrents of greed, corruption and racial tension, Penn uncovers a powerful secret that reaches to the highest levels of government.

 

And as the town closes ranks, Penn realises that his crusade for justice has taken a dangerous turn, one which could cost him his life…

 

[Daveo]

A Cambodian Prison Portrait. One Year in the Khmer Rouge's S-21

by Vann Nath.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya...

 

Account of an artist's experiences in prison during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.

 

[Daveo]

The Complete Alien Omnibus: "Alien", "Aliens", "Alien 3"

by Alan Dean Foster.

 

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An omnibus edition of Alan Dean Foster's Alien science fiction trilogy.

 

As the spaceship Nostromo glided through the silent reaches of the galaxy, the ships scanners detected a garbled distress call form a remote and long dead planet.

But all the technology on board could not protect the ship's crew from the living nightmare they found there.

It was a terror that stalked Ripley, the only survivor of Nostromo, and came to haunt her again and again...

 

Read the horrors of ALIEN and you won't believe that Ripley returned, with a team of death dealing Marines, right back into the jaws of a threat too monstrous to contemplate.

After the slaughter that was ALIENS, Ripley finds herself on a prison planet worse than anyone imagined hell.

But the nightmare of ALIEN 3 was only just beginning...

 

[Daveo]

The Road of Lost Innocence: The Story of a Cambodian Heroine

by Somaly Mam.

 

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A riveting and beautiful memoir of tragedy and hope by a woman named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world

 

Born in a village deep in the Cambodian forest, Somaly Mam was sold into sexual slavery by her grandfather when she was twelve years old.

For the next decade she was shuttled through the brothels that make up the sprawling sex trade of Southeast Asia.

She suffered unspeakable acts of brutality and witnessed horrors that would haunt her for the rest of her life until, in her early twenties, she managed to escape.

Unable to forget the girls she left behind, Mam became a tenacious and brave leader in the fight against human trafficking, rescuing sex workers some as young as five and six, offering them shelter, rehabilitation, healing and love and leading them into new life.

 

Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence is a memoir that will leave you awestruck by the courage and strength of this extraordinary woman and will renew your faith in the power of an individual to bring about change.

 

[Daveo]

Never Somewhere Else by Alex Gray.

 

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When three young women are discovered strangled and mutilated in a Glasgow park, it is up to DCI Lorimer to find their killer.

Frustrated by a lack of progress in the investigation, Lorimer is forced to enlist the services of Dr Solomon Brightman, psychologist and criminal profiler.

Together they form an uneasy alliance.

 

But when a homeless man is brought in for questioning the investigation takes a bizarre turn.

Soon Lorimer has to scratch the surface of the polished Glasgow art world and reveal the dark layers hidden beneath...

 

[Daveo]

Hollywood Hills by Joseph Wambaugh.

 

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For the streetwise cops of Hollywood Station, dealing with the panhandlers, prostitutes and costumed crackheads of the boulevard is all in a day's work.

If they're lucky, surf mad partners Flotsam and Jetsam can spend the morning calming the crazies and the afternoon policing the babes on the beach.

But beyond the lights and the crowds on the Walk of Fame, the real Los Angeles simmers dangerously.

And when things heat up, even veterans like Viv Daley will see things that they'll wish they could forget.

In the hills above town, it's a different world, where sports car studded driveways lead to sprawling villas stuffed with clothes and jewels.

Up here, pickings are easy for the Bling Ring, a group of photogenic young addicts who knock off celebrity cribs to fund their next fix. Even experienced cop and wannabe film star Nate "Hollywood" Weiss has struck gold in the hills. Leona Bruger, wife of an Industry Mover and Shaker, has taken a fancy to him.

Although he knows the Hollywood maxim, you don't pet the cougars, especially if they belong to the boss, Nate reckons that a leg over might be just the leg up he needs.

What Weiss does not realise is that his new flame's crooked art dealer is about to pull a forgery scam right under his nose.

And when a pair of desperate junkies hit on a foolproof plan to pay their drug debts with a stolen painting, things get very complicated indeed...

 

[Daveo]

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

 

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Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

 

After 103 weeks on the bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.

 

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate.

As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation.

With heart wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self sacrifice and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love.

 

[Daveo]

Memoirs of a Geisha: by Arthur Golden.

 

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A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel tells with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.

 

Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha.

It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house.

We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha, dance and music, wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair, pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.

 

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount, where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder, where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men and where love is scorned as illusion.

It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction, at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful and completely unforgettable.

 

[Daveo]

River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia by Jon Swain.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

"A splendid memoir, a tale, at once tragic and beautiful, of love and loss, of coming of age and of witnessing the end of Indochina as the West had known it for more than a century.

From the writer immortalized in the Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields.

 

[Daveo]

Muay Thai Basics: Introductory Thai Boxing Techniques

by Christoph Delp.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya..

 

Muay Thai, also referred to as Thai boxing, combines fitness training, self-defense, and competitive sport.

In this hands on guide, renowned trainer Christoph Delp presents the sport’s history, development, rules, and equipment.

In the techniques section, he first details basic skills such as the correct starting position and footwork.

Next he offers a complete list of all the attacking techniques and a selection of effective defensive and counterattacking strategies.

All techniques are presented step by step by Thai champions from the famous Sor Vorapin gym in Bangkok, showing readers the fine details of each technique.

The training section provides detailed information about the structure, content and planning of training regimens and this includes historical training methods, a stretching program and training schedules.

Suitable as both a self training guide and a supplement to club training,

Muay Thai Basics offers authoritative instruction for Thai boxers and other martial arts enthusiasts.

 

[Daveo]

Your Essential Guide to Culture Shock, Southeast Asia and the Orient.

 

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The foreword states the obvious, in some ways there are aching chasms of difference between the Oriental East and the Occidental West; however, editor Jake Anthony then highlights those appealing factors in the East, such as the cultural diversity and polite natures, saying that it is difficult to imagine better holiday locations, but when the reader is someone contemplating business, or settling in the East, the aching chasms appear again.

In an attempt to bridge those chasms, or at least forewarn, this book has been written.

Includes various useful Pattaya maps.

 

[Daveo]

Sleepless in Bangkok by Ian Quartermaine.

 

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In its initial release in Thailand, ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ engendered a tremendous amount of controversy.

It was unofficially banned for review in the press on the basis that it was ‘uncensored’.

Sex in Thailand as the world knows is available in any and every conceivable format, but apparently such goings on cannot be spoken about or acknowledged.

 

Despite this unofficial ban on press coverage and no reviews in the Thai press, a handful of English language freelance reviewers gave the book a set of to kill for reviews.

Over the years, the Internet added many more.

By Thai standards, its fifth pressing has made ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ a best seller and all without one paid advert.

 

The controversy even made the distributor reluctant to put the novel on bookshop shelves, making the book’s sales figures even more astounding, as for half of the time ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ just could not be purchased.

 

Another unexpected factor, was that a character in the book a British ex public school type whose sexual tastes ran to dressing up in French maid’s clothing, spanking and paedophilia - gained a lot of flack from ex-pat Brits educated in private boarding schools.

These ‘private’ schools are called ‘public’ in Britain to fool foreigners and the working classes into thinking they are available to all, whereas they are only really open to children of the rich and influential.

 

One of this social group an over the hill, small time journalist passing himself off as a ‘foreign correspondent’ (in reality a freelance ‘stringer’ in Bangkok) went as far as to get his virulent objections in print.

Not on purpose, he just didn’t realise his bitter and twisted behind the scenes comments would be fair game to publish by the journalist he was speaking to.

Talk about being hoisted by your own petard, as this former News of the Screws reporter had predominately made his living from digging the dirt on others.

The nationally published article confirmed that this frustrated author minus the talent to actually write a book himself, was obsessed with ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ and the character which he apparently considered resembled him.

 

Little did he realise, but his obsession with ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ and a character in it, confirmed the power of Ian Quartermaine’s prose, plot and characterisation and the author’s ability to involve and affect people.

In this case, making our ‘stringer’ lose touch with reality whilst making him confront his own character flaws.

 

Aptly, the cover of the book carries a warning advising people of a sensitive disposition and those who emanate from a sheltered personal background, ‘not’ to buy it. We guess that a private boarding school in times past would pass as a sheltered personal background regarding almost everything except spanking.

 

Appropriately, this Walter Mitty, fake Times of London Foreign Correspondent was later found guilty of libel in Thailand and received a suspended prison sentence and a large fine which he did not have the means to pay?

 

It’s about time someone finally brought the Secrets of the British ruling classes previously private perversions out into the open, and Ian Quartermaine has done it.

No wonder ‘Sleepless in Bangkok’ gained so much flack.

 

[Daveo]

Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors: Ann Rule's Crime Files Volume 16

by Ann Rule.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya.....

 

Bestselling author and Queen of true crime Ann Rule’s sixteenth volume in her True Crime Files series, Deadly Neighbors delves into the unsolved case of a billionaire’s son mysteriously falling off a balcony to his death and more.

 

In July 2011, billionaire Jonah Shacknai’s Coronado, California, mansion was the setting for two horrifying deaths only days apart his young son’s plunge from a balcony and his girlfriend’s ghastly hanging.

What really happened?

Baffling questions remain unanswered, as these cases were closed far too soon for hundreds of people; Rule looks at them now through the eyes of a relentless crime reporter.

The second probe began in Utah when Susan Powell vanished in a 2009 blizzard.

Her controlling husband, Josh, proved capable of a blind rage that was heartbreakingly fatal to his innocent small sons almost three years later in a tragedy that shocked America as the details unfolded.

If anyone had detected the depth of depravity within Josh Powell, perhaps the family that loved and trusted him would have been saved.

In these and seven other riveting cases, Ann Rule exposes the twisted truth behind the façades of Fatal Friends, Deadly Neighbors.

 

These doomed relationships are the focus of Queen of true crime Ann Rule’s sixteenth all-new Crime Files collection.

In these shattering inside views of both headlined and little-known homicides, Rule speaks for vulnerable victims who relied on the wrong people.

She begins with two startling novella-length investigations.

Included in our huge True Crime section at Canterbury Tales Bookshop are quite a good selection of books by Ann Rule.

 

[Daveo]

Mekong by Paul Adirex.

       @ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya...

Reader review; Paul Adirex is a interesting writer. He has a very good imagination in combining history, religion and his own imagination to write Mekong. When you read this piece of art, you will learn not only the lifestyle of rural area people, but you will learn about Buddhism as well. He has included the teaching of Lord Buddha in the novel. Worth reading. We have most of Paul Adirex books in Canterbury Tales Bookshop, Pattaya.

[Daveo]

Edited December 23, 2016 by Daveo

[Daveo]

Twilight over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess by Inge Sargent.

 

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Just married and returning to live in her new husband's native land, a young Austrian woman arrived with her Burmese husband by passenger ship in Rangoon in 1953.

They were met at dockside by hundreds of well wishers displaying colorful banners, playing music on homemade instruments and carrying giant bouquets of flowers.

She was puzzled by this unusual welcome until her embarrassed husband explained that he was something more than a recently graduated mining engineer, he was the Prince of Hsipaw, the ruler of an autonomous state in Burma's Shan mountains and these people were his subjects.

 

She immersed herself in the Shan lifestyle, eagerly learning the language, the culture, and the history of the Shan hill people.

The Princess of Hsipaw fell in love with this remote, exotic land and its warm and friendly people.

She worked at her husband's side to bring change and modernization to their primitive country.

Her efforts to improve the education and health care of the country, and her husband's commitment to improve the economic well being of the people made them one of the most popular ruling couples in Southeast Asia.

Then the violent military coup of 1962 shattered the idyllic existence of the previous ten years.

Her life irrevocably changed.

Inge Sargent tells a story of a life most of us can only dream about. She vividly describes the social, religious, and political events she experienced.

She details the day to day living as a "reluctant ruler" and her role as her husband's equal, a role that perplexed the males in Hsipaw and created awe in the females.

And then she describes the military events that threatened her life and that of her children.

 

Twilight over Burma is a story of a great happiness destroyed by evil, of one woman's determination and bravery against a ruthless military regime, and of the truth behind the overthrow of one of Burma's most popular local leaders.

 

[Terrychris47]

I love your books man.

Just trying to get a hold of a book but forget the proper name eh? Lol

 

Been trying to get it for ages eh just get it bro.

You probaly cant get it either mate .

 

I thunk its called Trafalgar & Josh ?

Edited December 24, 2016 by Terrychris47

[Daveo]

Forgotten Victory: The First World War - Myths and Realities

by Gary Sheffield.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya.....

 

The First World War is arguably the most misunderstood event in twentieth century history.

 

In this classic book, the leading military historian Professor Gary Sheffield argues that while the war was certainly tragic, it was not futile; and although frequently condemned as 'lions led by donkeys', in reality the British citizen army became a highly effective fighting force, which in 1918 won the greatest series of victories in British military history.

 

Forgotten Victory, first published in 2001 is a challenging and controversial book.

It was described in 2013 by Professor David Reynolds as 'the most significant of the revisionist works' on the British Army in the First World War.

 

While it does not underestimate the scale of the human tragedy or play down the disasters, it explodes many myths about the war, placing it in its true historical context.

 

[Daveo]

To all our Customers & Friends.

[Daveo]

The Rivals: The Intimate Story of a Political Marriage by James Naughtie.

 

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A penetrating insider’s view of the most important relationship in modern politics, the one on which the recent reinvention of Britain is founded: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

By the celebrated presenter James Naughtie.

 

No Prime Minister and Chancellor this century have been bound so closely together, each depending on the other’s strengths to repair weaknesses that might otherwise be politically fatal; yet theirs is a bond that crackles with suspicion and misunderstanding, lovers’ tiffs that send tremors through the government .

The story of the current era can only properly be told through the prism of this strange union and it has never been told before. James Naughtie is a unique insider.

A hugely respected political commentator, he has equal access to both men, to their key courtiers, to the party malcontents and everyone who has ever sat in Cabinet with them.

Not since Alan Clark’s Diaries has there been such a vivid, human portrait of the agonies and ecstasies of power in action.

Even the supporting players are wildly dramatic: the saturnine plotting of Peter Mandelson, the muscled protection of Alistair Campbell, the Scots traditionalists facing down the Number 10 policy wonks.

But the real drama is compressed into the central relationship.

Here are Othello and Iago, Caesar and Brutus.

This is a classic power play of our time, brilliantly, vividly and intimately staged by James Naughtie.

All bloody Liars the lot of them...............

 

[Daveo]

A Million Bullets: The real story of the British Army in Afghanistan

by James Fergusson.

 

@ Canterbury Tales Bookshop / Book exchange / Cafe, Pattaya...

 

In April 2006 a small British peace keeping force was sent to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

Within weeks they were cut off and besieged by some of the world's toughest fighters: the infamous Taliban, who were determined to send the foreigner's home again.

Defence Secretary John Reid had hoped that Operation Herrick 4 could be accomplished without a shot being fired; instead, the Army was drawn into the fiercest fighting it had seen for fifty years. Millions of bullets and thousands of lives have been expended since then in an under publicized but bitter conflict whose end is still not in sight. Some people consider it the fourth Anglo Afghan War since Victorian times.

How on earth did this happen ?

And what is it like for the troops on the front line of the 'War on Terror'?

James Fergusson takes us to the dark heart of the battle zone. Here, in their own words and for the first time, are the young veterans of Herrick 4.

Here, unmasked, are the civilian and military officials responsible for planning and executing the operation.

Here, too, are the Taliban themselves, to whom Fergusson gained unique and extraordinary access.

Controversial, fascinating and occasionally downright terrifying, A Million Bullets analyses the sorry slide into war in Helmand and asks this most troubling question: could Britain perhaps have avoided the violence altogether?

 

[Daveo]

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, by James Joyce.

 

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the first novel of Irish writer James Joyce.

A Künstlerroman in a modernist style, it traces the religious and intellectual awakening of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce and an allusion to Daedalus, the consummate craftsman of Greek mythology.

Stephen questions and rebels against the Catholic and Irish conventions under which he has grown, culminating in his self exile from Ireland to Europe.

The work uses techniques that Joyce developed more fully in Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

 

[Daveo]

Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot

by David P Chandler.

 

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In the tragic recent history of Cambodia a past scarred by a long occupation by Vietnamese forces and by the preceding three year reign of terror by the brutal Khmer Rouge, no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot.

As secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) since 1962 and as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), he has been widely blamed for trying to destroy Cambodian society.

By implementing policies whose effects were genocidal, he oversaw the deaths of more than one million of his nation’s people.

The political career of Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, forms a critical but largely inaccessible portion of twentieth century Cambodian history.

What we know about his life is sketchy: a comfortable childhood, three years of study in France, and a short career as a schoolteacher preceded several years, spent mostly in hiding as a guerrilla and the commander of the victorious army in Cambodia’s civil war.

His career reached a climax when he and his associates, coming to power, attempted to transform their country along lines more radical than any attempted by a modern regime.

Driven into hiding in 1979 by invading Vietnamese forces, Pol Pot maintained his leadership of a Khmer Rouge guerrilla army in exile, remaining a power and a threat.In this political biography, David P. Chandler throws light on the shadowy figure of Pol Pot.

Basing his study on interviews and on a wide range of sources in English, Cambodian, and French, the author illuminates the ideas and behavior of this enigmatic man and his entourage against the background of post World War II events, providing a key to understanding this horrific, pivotal period of Cambodian history.

In this revised edition, Chandler provides new information on the state of Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge following the death of Pol Pot in 1997.