Fari was born in Phnom Penh at a time when Cambodia was still learning how to breathe again. She grew up hearing stories that most of the world never heard, stories of what was lost, what was endured, and what ordinary people did to keep a nation alive. That history did not leave her. It became a question she has spent her life trying to answer: what does it take for a person to rise, carry others, and refuse to abandon them even when the cost is everything? Her books are her attempt to find out.