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Here’s a list of great books about Vietnam, many focused on the country and the culture and a few about the war.
By Duong Thu Huong
Huong, one of Vietnam’s leading writers and a well-known dissident there, presents a view of postwar Vietnam that is both barren of joy and rich with the textures of every day existence. The story is a testament to the waste and corruption that followed the hardship of war, but it’s also brimming with details that will make you yearn to go there. Nobody can write about Vietnamese food like Huong can. Also, try Novel Without a Name (about the war years), Beyond Illusions, and Memories of a Pure Spring, by the same author.
By Bao Ninh
In my classes on Vietnamese literature, I like to pair Bao Ninh’s Sorrow of War with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. There’s no better way to recognize the commonality of the tragedy suffered by Vietnamese and American soldiers during the war than to read these books and see the startling similarities in their accounts of hopelessness, alienation, and despair. Bao Ninh’s story of the soldier Kien is a beautifully written, and angry, testament to how much the Vietnamese people suffered, not only at the hands of Americans but also at the hands of their own leaders.
by Graham Greene
This novel sets a captivating story of love and espionage against the backdrop of a Vietnam few non-Vietnamese ever had a chance to see—Saigon in the years just before the United States got involved there. The place has changed so much since then, but one only has to step into one of the old cafes in downtown Ho Chi Minh City to get a feel for what Greene experienced way back then.
The Women on the Island
By Ho Anh Thai (University of Washington Press)
Thai’s surreal novel looks at how the years of war in Vietnam affected the Vietnamese people, women in particular. Centered on Cat Ba Island off the coast of Vietnam, the story examines how, after having struggled for years to achieve Vietnam’s victory in the war, a group of women find that their country at peace has no place for them.
Dumb Luck: A Novel by Vu Trong Phung
Translated by Nguyen Nguyet Cam and Peter Zinoman (University of Michigan Press)
This translation of one of the great novels by Vietnam’s brilliant and prolific early 20th Century master was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of 2003.
The Stars, The Earth, The River: Short Fiction by Le Minh Khue (Curbstone Press)
By Le Minh Khue
I translated this book, along with Bac Hoai Tran, so I’m partial to it, but I’m not alone among its fans. This story collection contains work by one of Vietnam’s leading fiction writers, some of which date back to the war years and others of which were written quite recently. The early stories, particularly the charming “The Distant Stars,” are quite romantic in their view of wartime Vietnam. Later stories show a sharp change in tone, as Khue reveals the disappointments of the postwar era. Sarcastic, bitingly funny, and often full of pathos, Khue’s stories present Vietnam today in all its rich complexity.
By Linh Dinh (Seven Stories Press)
This collection of stories by Vietnamese-American prize-winning poet Linh Dinh offer an acerbic, insighful look at life among Vietnamese immigrants in the United States. Kirkus Reviews noted the stories’ “vividly imagined characters” and the author Jessica Hagedorn called Linh “a unique voice in contemporary American literature.”
Crossing the River: Short Fiction by Nguyen Huy Thiep (Curbstone Press)
By Nguyen Huy Thiep
This collection, which I edited with Nguyen Nguyet Cam, is the most comprehensive edition ever published in English of work by Thiep, acclaimed as Vietnam’s most innovative and provocative contemporary writer. Widely diverse in form as well as content, these stories offer a broad and complicated view of Vietnam, from the eerie mountain villages of the Thai and Muong minority people to the stark and brutal experiences of rural farmers to the cut-throat existence of city dwellers who will do anything to get by. Strange, slyly funny, politically biting, and occasionally heartbreaking, these stories demonstrate for an American audience why Thiep has had such an extrordinary impact on literature in Vietnam.
By Tim O’Brien
Maybe the most wrenching, tragic account of war, ever. O’Brien writes so beautifully that you almost forget how horrifying his story is. Also, try Going After Cacciato.
The Other Side of Heaven: Postwar Fiction by Vietnamese and American Writers (Curbstone Press)
Edited by Linh Dinh (Seven Stories Press)
A wonderful collection of stories by some of Vietnam’s best contemporary writers. Linh has a quirky taste for fiction and he’s picked some of the edgiest work to come out of the country today. Highlights include Nguyen Huy Thiep’s “Without a King” and “Nine Down Makes Ten” by Pham Thi Hoai.
Edited by John Balaban and Nguyen Qui Duc (Whereabouts Press)
This collection, put together specifically with the traveller in mind, offers a vivid portrait of Vietnam, from the hectic life of Ho Chi Minh City in the South to the rural villages of the Red River Delta in the North. Highlights include Pham Thi Hoai’s hilarious and surprisingly moving “The Saigon Tailor Shop” and Nguyen Huy Thiep’s “Remembrance of the Countryside.”
Edited by Wayne Karlin and Ho Anh Thai (Curbstone Press)
The most recent collection of contemporary Vietnamese fiction, this 642-page book contains work from some of Vietnam’s most talented writers. Gerald Nicosia, reviewing the collection in the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “there is no word for it other than magnificent. This collection could easily hold its own alongside our own much-vaunted short-story masters.”
By Nguyen Du, translated and annotated by Huynh Sanh Thong (Yale University Press)
This long narrative poem is Vietnam’s great literary epic, learned in school and quoted in Vietnamese daily life in much the same way that English-speakers learn and love Shakespeare. It’s also a terrific adventure story about an ill-fated heroine and her attempts to find happiness and true love. Huynh Sanh Thong’s bilingual, annotated edition provides both an exquisite rendering of the verse and fascinating asides about Vietnamese language and culture.
By Ho Xuan Huong, translated by John Balaban (Copper Canyon Press)
Ho Xuan Huong was an 18th-century concubine and
poet. Her poetry, written in the ancient
nom script, is both subtly erotic and brazenly straightforward in its
articulation of the injustice of her world. This collection is outstanding, not
only because of Huong’s gorgeous poetry, but also because the translator and
publisher took the trouble to produce a trilingual edition—in English,
Vietnamese, and nom itself. It’s a
treasure for scholars and anyone who wants to see (if not read) the original
script. When Bill Clinton became the first American president to visit postwar
Vietnam, in 1999, he included an homage to Huong in one of the speeches he gave
there. You only have to read a couple of these poems to understand why.
By Nguyen Quang Thieu, translated by Martha Collins and Nguyen Quang Thieu (University of Massachusetts Press)
This bilingual edition of poems by contemporary Vietnamese poet Nguyen Quang Thieu presents a vivid, often agonizing portrait of Vietnam today, during the war, and in the now-remote past of the poet’s youth.
By
A memoir of life in Hanoi in the mid-1990s, told from the perspective of an American who went to live there.
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace
By Le Ly Hayslip, with Jay Wurtz
As the old saying goes, “When elephants and rhinos fight, it’s the flies and mosquitoes that suffer.” Le Ly Hayslip’s story of growing up in war-torn Vietnam provides what may be the best example yet of how ordinary civilians suffered, caught in the middle of a bloody war without an allegiance to any ideology. The memoir is a terrific page-turner, alternately shattering and uplifting. Hayslip’s sequel, Child of War, Woman of Peace describes her emigration to America and her attempt to make a life for herself and her children here.
Where the Ashes Are:
The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family
By Nguyen Qui Duc (Addison-Wesley Publishing Company)
This memoir offers an intertwined account of the fate of one formerly privileged South Vietnamese family just before and following the end of the war. While the young Duc fled to the United States and spent his teenage years growing up in California, his father spent years in a North Vietnamese prison camp writing poetry, and his mother, a one-time teacher, struggled to provide for her family in Ho Chi Minh City by selling noodles on the streets. The author Gloria Emerson called Where the Ashes Are an “exceptional and haunting memoir.”
Dispatches
By Michael Herr
Michael Herr’s classic account of the war in Vietnam, mostly told from the frontlines, is a testament to the ridiculousness of the situation and the waste of human life. It’s beautifully written and completely absorbing, even now, more than three decades after it first appeared. A reviewer for The New York Times said, “It’s as if Dante had gone to hell with a cassette recording of Jimi Hendrix and a pocketful of pills: Our first rock and roll war. Stunning!”
Understanding Vietnam
By Neil Jamieson (University of California Press)
Jamieson’s study offers a detailed, thoughtful look at Vietnamese history, culture, and traditions. In The New York Times, Herbert Mitgang said that Understanding Vietnam “Discloses what the American military and political leadership largely misunderstood: the nature of Vietnamese society, the confrontation with colonialism and Western values, the resistance of the intellectuals, and the culture of the people.”
Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
By Andrew X. Pham (Farrar Straus Giroux)
Andrew X. Pham’s beautifully written memoir mixes an account of a solo bicycle journey along the Pacific Rim with a story of family, identity, and returning to roots. Winner of the prestigious Kiriyama Prize.
Shadows and Wind: A
View of Modern Vietnam
By Robert Templer (Penguin Books)
Templer, a former correspondent for Agence France-Presse, has written a sharp, perceptive, extremely well-researched account of Vietnam today. Few writers have been willing to look at this subject so honestly and the result is both unsparing and enlightening.
A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and its Aftermath
By Truong Nhu Tang (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)
Even if you’re not particularly interested in details of the war, it will be difficult to resist this account by a former Viet Cong minister of justice, the highest Viet Cong official to go into exile. Truong’s story reveals in telling detail the harsh reality of life for the Viet Cong, and it also gives a comprehensive description of political bickering, turmoil, and heroism behind the lines. It’s a gripping story, extremely revealing and hard to put down.
The Girl in the Picture
By Denise Chong (Viking)
A well-told and interesting biography of the life of Kim Phuc, the little Vietnamese girl whose agony became world famous when a photographer captured her running down a rural road after a U.S. warplane dropped napalm on her and her village. The book is particularly provocative, and at times infuriating, when it explores the peculiar intersection between Kim Phuc’s private life and her status as Vietnam’s most famous war victim.
By Dao Strom (Houghton Mifflin Company)
[From a review I wrote for the Far Eastern Economic Review]
Near the beginning of Grass Roof, Tin Roof, Dao Strom’s fine first novel, Tran, a young Vietnamese single mother, visits a Saigon fortuneteller, who prophecies that, until Tran turns thirty, all her lovers will either leave her or die. After thirty, the prediction continues, life will improve and “a man from far off [will] come for her.” The prophecy comes true, but it’s difficult to know who or what is responsible. Is it fate? Or, is it Tran herself, who makes life-changing decisions to fulfill the prediction?
Tran’s ideas about fate blend both fervent belief and deep cynicism, an apparent contradiction that, in Strom’s hands, seems not only plausible but necessarily human. In fact, the natural tug-of-war between competing impulses plays itself out repeatedly in this novel. An adolescent girl tries to lose her virginity, but she doesn’t try very hard. A young man can’t seem to end an unsatisfying relationship with a woman because “[sometimes] a contendedness with her descend[s] upon him.”
The story follows Tran and her two children as they immigrate to America. Not long after their arrival, Tran marries a fellow immigrant, the Danish-American Hus, whom she decides is the “man from far off.” The rest of the novel centers on their lives in rural Northern California. Strom tells this story elliptically, through the shifting points of view of the five main characters in the novel: Tran; Hus; Tran’s two children; and Tran and Hus’s daughter.
As a novel about immigrants, the story explores the perennial theme of alienation but often in fresh and challenging ways. For example, rather than describing Tran’s early years in America from her point of view, Strom lets Tran’s husband tell the story. At one point, when a neighbor comes by the house, Hus sees his wife as the neighbor might: “squatting on the ground with her knees in her armpits,” and experiences “a feeling of repulsion.” It’s a far cry from the exoticized depiction of the alluring Asian woman.
The relationships between these five people are plagued by anger, sadness, and a host of misunderstandings—cross-cultural, cross-gender, intergenerational, inadvertent, even willfull. Somehow, despite their troubles, they love one another. Near the end of the novel, April, Tran’s daughter, returns to Vietnam and searches for her biological father. Unsuccessful, she writes to Hus, her stepfather, and says, “I’d like to think I already know who my real father is. (I mean you.).” The surprise of the book lies not in the quality of the love between these people, which is hard-won and often begrudging, but in the fact that it exists at all. Ultimately, the endurance of this emotion becomes the family’s victory, and the its delicate rendering becomes the novel’s great triumph.
The Gangster We Are All Looking For by le thi diem thuy (Knopf)
(From a review I wrote)
In many recent books, the line between fact and fiction has grown fuzzy. Memoirists risk sounding unbelievable by remembering, word for word, conversations that took place fifty years ago. Meanwhile, many novels seem like thinly disguised autobiographies. Sometimes, the label “novel” or “memoir” seems merely based on the whims of a publisher’s marketing committee. As le thi diem thuy demonstrates in her compelling first novel, The Gangster We Are All Looking For, a more significant distinction between memoir and novel lies in the way that a skilled author can blend real life and imagination
In a story that seems to follow the outline of the author’s own childhood, the novel’s narrator arrives in the United States in 1978 with her father and four other men after fleeing Vietnam on a boat. Though the four men aren’t related to the girl and her father, the randomness of refugee resettlement means that the six end up living together in Southern California. “Before Linda Vista, we lived in the Green Apartment on Thirtieth and Adams, in Normal Heights,” the narrator explains. “Before the Green Apartment, we lived in the Red Apartment on Forty-ninth and Orange, in East San Diego.” Here, the precise facts make these apartments seem like real places, while the flat tone evokes a sense of disconnection, the idea that these refugees are merely floating, untethered to any community.
In most memoirs, a single first-person narrator tells the entire story. A novel, however, doesn’t have to adhere to such constraints and, in fact, thuy’s narrative occasionally shifts point-of-view at strange moments. When the girl’s mother finally arrives in the United States, she promptly crashes the family car into their apartment house gate. Here, without fanfare, the narrative switches to the perspective of the landlord, frustrated by his careless refugee tenants. “They were people who broke things,” he muses: “the washing machine, screen doors, kitchen sinks, windows, the back gate and now the front. And they let their children run wild.” By giving the reader access to the landlord’s thoughts, the author makes him a comprehensible character and enhances the reader’s understanding of how the psychological effects of immigration cut a wide swath across American culture.
Near the end of the novel, an old man carries home the body of his drowned grandson. “Like a dark, wiry bird,” thuy writes, “he seems to be hopping and then gliding across the hot sand.” Far from maudlin, such acutely described imagery evokes a devastating sadness. In a novel, a reader often can’t tell the difference between fact and fiction. The story has to feel authentic, and this one does.
Photography Books
Vietnam: A Portrait
By Lou Dematteis
Dematteis’ book, for which I wrote the captions and an accompanying essay, presents a stark, surprising portrait of contemporary Vietnam. From a shot of a bride and groom celebrating their wedding to a look at AIDS patients in an ill-equipped hospital, Dematteis captures Vietnam today with both beauty and candor.
A Day in the Life of
Vietnam
This gorgeous, hefty volume will take up more than half a coffee table and it’s worth every inch. Some of the world’s most talented photographers spread out over the entire country to capture it in a day. The result gives us a fascinating look at the country, remarkable not only for the intensity of its people but also for its breathtaking diversity.
Hanoi: Biography of a
City
By William S. Logan (University of Washington Press)
For fans of Vietnam’s great capital city, nothing could be better than this informative, nicely designed collection of photographs and history. The photographs of contemporary Hanoi show a city on the verge of reinventing itself, while the pictures of Old Hanoi demonstrate how, in some important ways, the city hasn’t changed that much at all.
Another Vietnam:
Pictures of the War from the Other Side
By Tim Page, edited by Doug Niven and Chris Riley (National Geographic)
[from a review I wrote for Mother Jones]
How many thousands of pictures have we seen of the war in Vietnam? Funny, then, that a photo book could appear more than twenty years after the end of the conflict and finally reveal the humanity of the other side. These images, by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong photographers, lack the sense of futility that so marks the work of Western photojournalists shooting at the same time. Instead, we see soldiers merrily waving goodbye to their village as they depart for the front lines, and hardy youth volunteers hauling supply-laden bicycles along the rough terrain of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Certainly, this “can-do” aesthetic has a strong element of propaganda to it. Vietnamese writers have in recent years begun to disclose that opinion north of the DMZ often contained hushed criticism of the government war effort. Still, such images prove the essential point: From the beginning, these people were determined to win. In one picture, breathtaking in form as well as content, a medical team prepares for surgery in an improvised operating room, knee-deep in the waters of a mangrove swamp. As Ho Chi Minh reportedly told one photographer, who worried about developing negatives without electricity or proper supplies, “Obstacles make you clever.”