Description

a poignant description of Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam in 1950, with all their beauty, gentleness, grandeur and intricate political balance intact – Restores this lost world, like a phoenix, from the ashes of the Vietnam war and its aftermath – shows the Vietnamese guerilla movement in its infancy, ranged against the French colonial powers, and the early affects of imported Western materialism – a best-seller when first published, and venerated by all the Saigon-based war correspondents in the ’70s – inspired Graham Greene to go to Vietnam and write The Quiet American

Publisher Review

"one of the best post-war travel books and, in retrospect, the most heart-rending" The Observer