WHEN ELEPHANTS FIGHT

By turns compelling, confusing and dull, Imam's book achieves its modest goal: to document the author's family history and that of her native Cambodia for her sons, whom she and her Lebanese-born husband are raising in Australia. Daughter of a Vietnamese homemaker, whom she portrays as saintly, and a short-tempered philandering Cambodian civil servant, who kept a second family on the side, Imam left Phnom Penh in 1971 to study in Australia, where she remained while the Khmer Rouge conducted its reign of terror. Her guilt over her family's suffering is palpable: her grandmother, aunt and uncle were murdered, her immediate family incarcerated in a work camp and her father tortured; her mother, brothers, father and other relatives eventually escaped. Readers unfamiliar with the racism and elitism rampant in Cambodian culture (throughout childhood, Imam was shunned for her Vietnamese blood) will find certain sections of the book enlightening and moving. But they don't redeem the mostly uneven blend of national and family history and memoir, which begins with the birth of Imam's paternal great-grandfather in the late 19th century, about 20 years after France declared Cambodia a protectorate, and ends with an account of relatives now living in France and the U.S. Her sons will appreciate this record, but her inability to integrate her three narratives and attention to trivialities of family relationships make her story less than engrossing. Readers who want a sense of the tragedy of Cambodia will do better to read Long Ung's First They Killed My Father. Seven photos, one map. (May 1)