Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [386]
James Sullivan Over the Moat. Cultures collide as Sullivan courts a Hué shop-girl he met while cycling through Vietnam in 1992. Part love-story, part travelogue.
Paul Theroux The Great Railway Bazaar. His elaborate circumnavigation of Europe and Asia by train took Theroux, in 1973, to a South Vietnam still bewildered by the recent American withdrawal. In bleak sound-bite accounts of rides from Saigon to Bien Hoa and Hué to Da Nang, he describes the war’s awful legacy of poverty, suffering and infrastructural breakdown, but marvels at the country’s unbowed, and unexpected, beauty.
Gabrielle M. Vassal On and Off Duty in Annam. An enchanting wander through turn-of-the-century southern Vietnam, penned by the intrepid wife of a French army doctor. A stint in Saigon is followed by a boat trip to Nha Trang (where she was carried ashore “on the backs of natives through the breakers”) and a gutsy foray into the central highlands; amazing prints of the Vietnamese and montagnards she encountered further enhance the account.
Justin Wintle Romancing Vietnam. Wintle’s genial but lightweight yomp upcountry was one of the first of its kind, post-doi moi, and remains a pleasing aperitif to travels in Vietnam.
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Vietnamese abroad
Donald Anderson (ed.) Aftermath: An Anthology of Post-Vietnam Fiction. As the war’s tendrils crept across the Pacific to America, they touched not only the people who fought, but also those who stayed at home. In their depictions of Americans, Amerasians and Asians regathering the strands of their lives, these short stories run the gamut of emotions provoked by war.
Robert Olen Butler A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. 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. War veteran Olen Butler’s assured prose ensures the voices of his Vietnamese characters find perfect pitch.
Le Ly Hayslip Child of War, Woman of Peace. In this follow-up to When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Hayslip’s narrative shifts to America, where the cultural disorientation of a new arrival is examined.
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Vietnamese literature
John Balaban and Nguyen Qui Duc (eds.) Vietnam: A Traveller’s Literary Companion. The editors of this entertaining volume of short stories, written by Vietnamese writers based both at home and abroad, chose to avoid tales of war and politics during their selection process, though both themes inevitably make their presence felt.
Bao Ninh The Sorrow of War. 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.
Steven Bradbury Poems from the Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh Tinfish. This beautifully rendered selection of the poems Ho penned while behind bars in 1942, in which he looks to birdsong and moonlight to ease the loneliness of prison life, provide a touching glimpse of the man behind the myth.
Alastair Dingwall (ed.) Traveller’s Literary Companion to South-East Asia. Among the bite-sized essays inside this gem of a book is an enlightening thirty-page segment on Vietnam, into which are crammed biopics, a recommended reading list, historical, linguistic and literary backgrounds. Excerpts range from classical literature to the writings of foreign journalists in the 1960s.
Duong Thu Huong Novel Without a Name. A tale of young Vietnamese men seeking glory but finding only loneliness, disillusionment and death, as war abridges youth and curtails loves. A depiction of dwindling idealism, and a radical questioning of the political motives behind the war. Other highly acclaimed works by the same author include Paradise of the Blind and Memories of a Pure Spring.
Duong Van Mai Elliot The Sacred Willow. Mai Elliot brings Vietnamese history to life in this compelling account of her family through