It is indisputable that the reverberations of war influence profoundly on contemporary life. Consequently, writers remain deeply engaged in revisiting, rewriting, and reflecting upon the past. In Southeast Asia, where most nations have endured colonial histories, war literature has emerged as a critical literary genre. War, in these works, is depicted with unflinching realism, capturing the full brutality of conflict, pain, and death. This article studies two works: First They Killed My Father (2000) by Loung Ung and Beauty Is a Wound (2011) by Eka Kurniawan. First They Killed My Father is the story of Loung Ung as a child and her memories of the Khmer Rouge war in Cambodia. Beauty Is a Wound is a portrait of Indonesia’s painful history from the Dutch colonial period and World War II to the civil wars. Drawing on Zoltan Kövecse’s conceptual metaphor theory, this study explores the representations of death in both works, elucidating the significance of death within Southeast Asian war literature. By comparing the similarities and differences in the portrayal of death through the characters in these two novels, this analysis offers a fresh perspective on the histories of Southeast Asian nations as reflected through the theme of death. It also underscores how these novels contribute to global literary discourses on war, memory, and death.