See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Cambodia. 

These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers	Loung Ung	53,058	2,414
The Rent Collector	Camron Wright	57,712	718
In the Shadow of the Banyan	Vaddey Ratner	21,825	1,091
Never Fall Down	Patricia McCormick	12,254	737
The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine	Somaly Mam	8,739	510
When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge	Chanrithy Him	4,980	461
The Disappeared	Kim Echlin	3,752	409
Children of the River	Linda Crew	1,986	752

I’ve had a number of countries in this list with a particular national trauma that dominates the literature about them, but I think Cambodia is unusual in the proportion of such books written by actual Cambodians rather than well-meaning Americans, and which are set in the middle of the horror rather than in its aftermath. You could find that depressing, but I find it rather admirable.

This week’s overall winner, First They Killed My Father, is a first-person account from a child’s point of view of the violence meted out by the regime on pretty much anyone. Its historicity has been challenged, but it clearly carries an emotional punch.

This week’s Goodreads winner, The Rent Collector, is unfortunately by an American writer trying to imagine the situation of poor children in Phnom Penh, and doesn’t sound as good. I scores remarkably well on Goodreads relative to its LibraryThing ownership.

I disqualified only one book this week, Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So, which is set among the Cambodian diaspora in the USA.

Other countries where I only disqualified one book: India, the USA, Nigeria, Russia, Iran, the UK, Spain, Iraq.

Countries where I have not disqualified any books: Japan, Egypt, DRC, Vietnam, Colombia.

Coming next: a run of African countries, Zimbabwe, Guinea (Conakry), Benin and Rwanda.

Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium
Oceania: Australia