Author Description

Equipped with the sensitivity known from his earlier reportages, in <i>Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine</i>, Wojciech Tochman addresses people with mental illnesses in Cambodia who are imprisoned in kennels, chained up, and locked in cells—often by their own families, who are desperate and at a loss for what to do. Doctors from the Transcultural Psychosocial Organization, in turn, face a great challenge in helping these people because there are only fifty psychiatrists in a country of sixteen million people. <i>Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine</i> approaches both the doctors and their patients with empathy, and also highlights the country’s other social problems, such as slave labor or the lack of sensitivity in society.</p><p>A thematic continuation of Polish journalist Tochman’s self-described "dark triptych" about societies affected by genocides, <i>Roosters Crow, Dogs Whine</i> presents a portrait of a Cambodia in which the memory of the Khmer Rouge terror is still alive, where the nation is suffering from a trauma referred to as <i>baksbat,</i> or “broken courage syndrome.”</p>