Book: The Headmaster’s Wager(New August 2012) by Vincent Lam
Perhaps books like this should come with a warning–“Dinner may be late and laundry will remain dirty.” Once I started The Headmaster’s Wager, I was reluctant to stop for minor interruptions like answering the telephone or eating dinner. It plunged me into an unknown world. I cared deeply about the characters. To add to the impressive credentials, although the author has written other books, this is his first novel. Continue reading Fast-Paced Book:Love and Loss in Vietnam→
Hell in a Very Small Place and Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
Today I am giving you some more book recommendations for Vietnam, and a question. Have you recently seen the Continental Hotel in Saigon? Traveler’s Bro wants to know.
With the previous post on Vietnam, I forgot to include a recommendation from Wandering Eds, so here is the link to an article about the bookThe Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, presented lovingly in a review by Joel Carillet.
Traveler’s Bro posted a couple of recommendations and a question for readers of this blog, and I post it in its entirety below.
“Other worthy works on Vietnam before the ‘American War’ there: Bernard B. Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Placeand Street without Joy. These provide history lessons with literary quality. Graham Greene’s The Quiet American expresses the bitter old Euro-imperialist’s disgust with Americans’ brash optimisim about saving the Vietnamese for liberal democracy. Sadly, it can now be considered prophetic. (It led me to pay a visit to the old Continental Hotel during the late war. The open bar-veranda seemed to invite VC grenade tossing, but I was told the management bribed the bad guys to stay away. In 1969 it still had the old colonial “puka” feel about it: waiters in clean white jackets delivering cocktails to international patrons while a few miles away the war roared on. Anyone visited there recently? Has anything really changed or does it remain a restful cul-de-sac of colonial history?)”
Please let us know if you’ve been to the Continental Hotel in Saigon. And keep the recommendations coming. Thanks for all the help. We will be using reader recommendations for books on Scotland and Australia and Sweden in upcoming posts.
Photograph by Amit K (Sydney) obtained through Flickr with permission of photographer. Click on the picture to see more by this amazine photographer.