 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(August 2024) |
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| Author | Andrew Kaplan |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Grand Central Publishing |
Publication date | January 1, 1987 |
| ISBN | 978-0-446-51377-7 |
Dragonfire is a 1987 spy thriller novel by American author Andrew Kaplan, [1] published by Warner Books in hardcover and softcover editions. It was an international best-seller and a Main Selection of the Book of the Month Club in England.
The novel follows CIA agent Sawyer as he embarks on a dangerous mission to prevent a Southeast Asian war. The mission takes him to the waterfront of Bangkok, where he is tasked with rescuing fellow agent Parker, who was previously captured. Along the way, Sawyer teams up with Suong, a beautiful and fierce Eurasian resistance fighter, and Toonsang, an opium trader with questionable allegiances. Together, they embark on a journey to find Parker which leads them to the forbidden hill country of the Golden Triangle.
In the Golden Triangle, they come face to face with Bhun Sa, the most powerful warlord in the opium trade. Sawyer takes him out, and he and Suong escape to abandoned temple ruins in Cambodia. To prove her loyalty, Suong tells Sawyer about her experience surviving the Killing Fields under the Khmer Rouge regime.
However, things take a dark turn when Sawyer is captured by the Khmer Rouge, and Suong's true identity as a war criminal is revealed. She is the sister of Pranh, the notorious Brother Number Two of the Killing Fields. Vietnamese forces ultimately attack the Khmer Rouge, which leads to Sawyer's freedom. He takes Suong captive, and after a final showdown with Vasnasong, the billionaire businessman behind the plot, Sawyer turns Suong over to the Cambodian resistance.
In an epilogue, the story reveals Suong's brutal death at the hands of her former victims while aboard a ship.
The Khmer Rouge is the name that was popularly given to members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) and by extension to the regime through which the CPK ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. The name was coined in the 1960s by then Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk to describe his country's heterogeneous, communist-led dissidents, with whom he allied after the 1970 Cambodian coup d'état.
Pol Pot was a Cambodian communist revolutionary, politician and a dictator who ruled Cambodia as Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1976 and 1979. Ideologically a Maoist and a Khmer ethnonationalist, he was a leading member of Cambodia's communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, from 1963 to 1997, and served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. His administration converted Cambodia into a one-party communist state and perpetrated the Cambodian genocide.
Haing Somnang Ngor was a Cambodian-born American actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Dith Pran in the biographical drama film The Killing Fields (1984). He was murdered in Los Angeles in 1996.
Edward Samuel Herman was an American economist, media scholar and social critic. Herman is known for his media criticism, in particular the propaganda model hypothesis he developed with Noam Chomsky, a frequent co-writer. He held an appointment as Professor Emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He also taught at Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Killing Fields is a 1984 British biographical drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. It was directed by Roland Joffé and produced by David Puttnam for his company Goldcrest Films. Sam Waterston stars as Schanberg, Haing S. Ngor as Pran, and John Malkovich as Al Rockoff. The adaptation for the screen was written by Bruce Robinson; the musical score was written by Mike Oldfield and orchestrated by David Bedford.
The Cambodian–Vietnamese War was an armed conflict between Democratic Kampuchea, controlled by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war began with repeated attacks by the Liberation Army of Kampuchea on the southwestern border of Vietnam, particularly the Ba Chúc massacre which resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians. On 23 December 1978, 10 out of 19 of the Khmer Rouge's military divisions opened fire along the border with Vietnam with the goal of invading the Vietnamese provinces of Đồng Tháp, An Giang and Kiên Giang. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea, occupying the country in two weeks and removing the government of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from power. In doing so, Vietnam put an ultimate stop to the Cambodian genocide, which had most likely killed between 1.2 million and 2.8 million people — or between 13 and 30 percent of the country’s population.
The Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, renamed in 1990 to the National Government of Cambodia, was a coalition government in exile composed of three Cambodian political factions, namely Prince Norodom Sihanouk's FUNCINPEC party, the Party of Democratic Kampuchea and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) formed in 1982, broadening the de facto deposed Democratic Kampuchea regime. For most of its existence, it was the internationally recognized government of Cambodia.
Benedict F. "Ben" Kiernan is an Australian-born American historian who is the Whitney Griswold Professor Emeritus of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
Democratic Kampuchea was the Cambodian state from 1975 to 1979, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge. It was established following the Khmer Rouge's capture of the capital Phnom Penh, effectively ending the United States-backed Khmer Republic of Lon Nol. After Vietnam took Phnom Penh in 1979, it was disestablished in 1982 with the creation of the CGDK in its place.
Operation Freedom Deal was a military campaign led by the United States Seventh Air Force, taking place in Cambodia between 19 May 1970 and 15 August 1973. Part of the larger Vietnam War and the Cambodian Civil War, the goal of the operation was to provide air support and interdiction in the region. Launched by President Richard Nixon as a follow-up to the earlier ground invasion during the Cambodian Campaign, the initial targets of the operation were the base areas and border sanctuaries of the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Viet Cong (VC).
The Ba Chúc massacre was the mass killing of 3,157 civilians in Ba Chúc, An Giang Province, Vietnam, by the Revolutionary Army of Kampuchea from April 18 to 30, 1978. The Khmer Rouge took the local villagers to temples and schools to torture and kill them. The residents who fled to the mountains in the following days were also brutally slaughtered. Almost all the victims were shot, stabbed or beheaded.
Scorpion is a spy thriller novel by Andrew Kaplan, published by Macmillan in hardcover in 1985 and as a Warner Books paperback in 1986. It hit best-seller lists in Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany and Greece.
Hour of the Assassins is the first spy thriller novel by author Andrew Kaplan, originally published by Dell Publishing.
The People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) was a partially recognised state in Southeast Asia which existed from 1979 to 1989. It was a satellite state of Vietnam, founded in Cambodia by the Vietnamese-backed Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation, a group of Cambodian communists who were dissatisfied with the Khmer Rouge due to its oppressive rule and defected from it after the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot's government. Brought about by an invasion from Vietnam, which routed the Khmer Rouge armies, it had Vietnam and the Soviet Union as its main allies.
The CIA conducted secret operations in Cambodia and Laos for eight years as part of the conflict against Communist North Vietnam.
The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot. It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia's population in 1975.
The Opium General and other stories by Michael Moorcock was a hardcover collection of novellas, short stories, and articles. It was published in 1984 by Harrap. It was a collection of new work and rare items.
The fall of Phnom Penh was the capture of Phnom Penh, capital of the Khmer Republic, by the Khmer Rouge on 17 April 1975, effectively ending the Cambodian Civil War. At the beginning of April 1975, Phnom Penh, one of the last remaining strongholds of the Khmer Republic, was surrounded by the Khmer Rouge and totally dependent on aerial resupply through Pochentong Airport.
So Phim was a leader of the Khmer Issarak movement, the third-rank official of the Permanent Bureau and of the Military Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, deputy head of the People's National Liberation Armed Forces of Kampuchea, and secretary of East Zone of the Democratic Kampuchea of the Khmer Rouge, until he refused to apply the Cambodian genocide designed by Pol Pot and his comrades, a refusal that led to his own suicide in June 1978.
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