Driven by a desire to understand how a country, whose culture is Buddhist and therefore awake to compassion, could have indulged in the brutality of the Khmer Rouge who in less than four years massacred or starved to death a quarter of the population, Abbas starts his journey through Buddhism in Cambodia.

Buddhism in Cambodia is more a matter of rituals than adherence to its philosophy of compassion. It can be argued that Buddhism not only failed to prevent the savagery of the Khmer Rouge, but somehow facilitated it : renunciation of worldly goods made the return to a village life more acceptable...