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BOOKS |
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Mark Baker , Nam (Sphere, UK; Berkley, US). Unflinching firsthand
accounts of the GI's descent from boot camp into the morass of death,
paranoia, exhaustion and tedium.
John Balaban and Nguyen Qui Duc (eds.) , Vietnam: A Traveller's Literary
Companion (Whereabouts Press, UK/US). Entertaining volume of short
stories, written by Vietnamese writers based both at home and abroad.
Bao Ninh , The Sorrow of War (Minerva, UK; Berkley, US). This is a
ground-breaking novel, largely due to its portrayal of communist
soldiers suffering the same traumas, fear and lost innocence as their
American counterparts.
Maria Coffey , Three Moons in Vietnam (Abacus, UK). Delightfully jolly
jaunt around Vietnam by boat, bus and bicycle, in which Coffey conspires
to meet more locals in one day than most travellers do in a month.
Duong Thu Huong , Novel Without a Name (Picador, UK; Penguin, US). A
tale of young Vietnamese men seeking glory but finding only loneliness,
disillusionment and death, as war abridges youth and curtails loves.
Duong Van Mai Elliot , The Sacred Willow (OUP). Mai Elliot brings
Vietnamese history to life in this compelling account of her family
through four generations.
Marguerite Duras , The Lover (Flamingo, UK; HarperCollins, US). The
story of a young French girl's affair with a wealthy Chinese from Cholon
depicts a dysfunctional French family in Vietnam and provides an
interesting slant on expat life.
Bernard Fall , Hell in a Very Small Place (Da Capo, UK/US). The classic
account of the siege of Dien Bien Phu.
Graham Greene , The Quiet American (Penguin, UK/US). Greene's prescient
and cautionary tale of the dangers of innocence in uncertain times,
which second-guessed America's boorish manhandling of Vietnam's
political situation, is still the best single account of wartime
Vietnam.
Graham Greene , Ways of Escape (Penguin, UK; Pocket Books, US). Greene's
global travels in the 1950s took him to Vietnam for four consecutive
winters; the coverage of Vietnam in this slim autobiographical volume is
intriguing, but tantalizingly short.
Anthony Grey , Saigon (Pan, UK; Dell OP, US). A rip-roaring narrative,
whose Vietnamese, French and American protagonists conspire to be
present at all defining moments in recent Vietnamese history, from
French plantation riots to the fall of Saigon.
Michael Herr , Dispatches (Pan, UK; Random House, US). Infuriatingly
narcissistic at times, Herr's spaced-out narrative still conveys the
mud, blood and guts of the American war effort in Vietnam.
Henry Kamm , Dragon Ascending. Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent Kamm
lets the Vietnamese - art dealers, ex-colonels, academics, doctors,
authors - speak for themselves, in this convincing portrait of
contemporary Vietnam.
Stanley Karnow , Vietnam: A History (Pimlico, UK; Penguin, US). Weighty,
august tome that elucidates the entire span of Vietnamese history.
Gabriel Kolko , Vietnam: Anatomy of a Peace (Routledge, UK). No other
recent account of contemporary Vietnam has done a better job of
describing the social, political and economic upheavals that the country
has suffered over the past few years.
Le Ly Hayslip , When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (Pan, UK;
NAL-Dutton, US). This heart-rending tale of villagers trying to survive
in a climate of hatred and distrust is perhaps more valuable than any
history book.
Norman Lewis , A Dragon Apparent (Eland, UK; Hippocrene, US). When in
1950 Lewis made the journey that would inspire his seminal Indochina
travelogue, the Vietnam he saw was still a land of longhouses and
imperial hunts, though poised for renewed conflict.
Michael Maclear , Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (Mandarin OP, UK;
Avon, US). A detailed yet accessible account of the French and American
wars.
Nguyen Du , The Tale of Kieu (Yale University Press, UK/US). Vietnamese
literature reached its zenith with this tale of ill-starred love.
Nguyen Huy Thiep , The General Retires and Other Stories (Oxford
University Press, UK/US). These short stories by Vietnam's pre-eminent
writer articulate the lives of ordinary Vietnamese.
Tim O'Brien , The Things They Carried (Flamingo, UK; Penguin, US).
Through a mix of autobiography and fiction O'Brien lays to rest the
ghosts of the past in a brutally honest reappraisal of the war.
Robert Olen Butler , A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (Minerva, UK;
Penguin, US). Pulitzer prize-winning collection of short stories that
ponder the struggles of Vietnamese in America to maintain the cultural
ley lines linking them with their mother country, and the gulf between
them and their Americanized offspring.
John Pilger , Heroes (Pan, UK). Pilger's systematic dismantling of the
myth that America's role was in any way a justifiable "crusade" makes
his Vietnam reportage required reading.
Neil Sheehan , A Bright Shining Lie (Pan, UK; Random House, US). This
monumental account of the war, hung around the life of the soldier John
Paul Vann, won the Pulitzer Prize for Sheehan; one of the true classics
of Vietnam-inspired literature.
Robert Templer , Shadows and Wind (Little, Brown & Co). This
hard-hitting book casts a critical eye over Vietnam's decade of reform,
from corruption and censorship to the emergence of a consumer-oriented
youth culture.
Justin Wintle , Romancing Vietnam (Penguin, UK; Pantheon OP, US).
Wintle's genial but lightweight yomp upcountry was one of the first of
its kind, post-doi moi.
Gavin Young , A Wavering Grace (Penguin, UK). The poignant tale of a
Vietnamese family torn apart by the war and its aftermath, as witnessed
by this veteran adventurer.
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