The photographer and film-maker Raymond Depardon and the writer Jean-Claude Guillebaud belong to a generation who grew up with the word "Vietnam" on their lips. As journalists, both had covered the Vietnam war until 1972. After 20 years - of Stalinism, boat people, Hollywood heroics and French nostalgia - they decided it was time to go back. They travelled from South to North, from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi, exploring memories of the war and the contradictions of peace, looking and listening with a sensitivity and sense of solidarity all too rare in travel writing. The result is an account of a country transformed and of a people, victors and victims together, betrayed on all sides, coming back to life. In Hanoi, they find none of the grim austerity imagined by foreigners, but rather a city of beauty now "opening" to capitalism partly thanks to the experiences and money orders of workers sent in their thoousands to Poland or the GDR. At Khe Sanh, on the bloodiest battlefield of the war, children dig for shrapnel to sell for a cent a kilo, lovers stroll on the beach at Da Nang, where the first US troops landed.
Loudspeakers in the street still broadcast a litany of production figures, but they are drowned out by Paul Anka and the Everly Brothers. Saigon, the authors discover, has easily triumphed over Stalinism's murderous economic planning. But it may face a tougher adversary in capitalism. Jean-Claude Guillebaud is the author of "Les Jours Terribles d'Israel", "Les Anneess Orphelines 1968-1978" and "Voyage en Oceanie".
- ISBN10 0860914186
- ISBN13 9780860914181
- Publish Date 18 October 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 June 1998
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 160
- Language English