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Her Father’s Daughter by Alice Pung
JUDGES' COMMENTS
This book offers much more than mere memoir. Alice Pung’s experiences occur in an echo chamber of family: parents who have survived the horrors of Pol Pot’s killing fields and are haunted by their experiences, even after settling in Australia, land of seemingly endless opportunity. Alice is keenly aware of the irony — in the land of freedom, she grows up circumscribed. The more freedom — leaving home, student life, travel, friendships, love — the more, in her parents’ eyes, the danger.
The book has a moral dimension that takes it beyond autobiography: for Alice, the real miracle was that after everything her father went through, he could still love.