May 2018: The Exotic Lands of Southeast Asia

The Temple of Literature, Hanoi, Vietnam & Leyte Landing Memorial Park, Phillipines

Southeast Asia is defined as being south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The lands that make up this sub-region are: Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Phillipines, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Brunei, and Timor-Leste - these are the lands of Southeast Asia. My theme for May's Reading Through Time is to read a historical book that is set in one of these exotic lands.

The choices are varied and many, with subject matters that range from when “The sun never set on the British Empire”, to wars of many different origins and participants, to regimes that took control of a country by overthrowing the government, to family sagas set in the jungles and plantations (tea, rubber etc.), to explorers from other lands and early settlement of this area.

Some books that come to mind are:

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
Temple of a Thousand Faces by John Shor
A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Broken Jewel by David L. Robbins
We Band of Angels by Elizabeth M.Norman
The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher J. Koch
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng
The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies
The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay

These books just barely scratch the surface of this corner of the world. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone is going to read for this theme.



Angkor-Wat, Myanmar & Sukhothai Historical Park, Northern Thailand

I am hoping to finally read a book that has been on my TBR for quite some time. The King's Last Song by Geoff Ryman is set in Cambodia and jumps back and forth from the 12th Century to more modern times.

Definitely, finally, going to get around to The Ugly American.

I've also got a book Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell. I have no idea why I ever bought it, it's been around forever, it hasn't gotten the greatest reception on LT (criticized as "chick lit"), but I'll probably read it for the sake of the May theme and to finish up a ROOT.

What a great theme! I've got several books from which to choose, most of them set in Vietnam. Will take a look at which one strikes my fancy, but am thinking of The Lotus Eaters, which I have on my shelf.

I love historical Asian books. Great idea Judy.

>4 Tess_W: I loved The Lotus Eaters when I read it.

>5 Roro8: Thanks, Ro. I have quite a few historical Asian books on my shelves, so this theme is definitely self-serving!

The Headmaster's Wager / Vincent Lam

is a possibility for me.

I was thinking of The Glass Palace by AmitavGhosh, but I don't know how much of it is set in Malaya. Might be mostly India and Burma. So I will have a bit more of a look.

This is a bit of a stretch for me. All the Asian books on my shelves are from China, Japan or Burma. I came up with The Quiet American which is set in Saigon. I have a hold on it at the library so I hope it shows up in time.

>9 Familyhistorian: Quiet and Ugly! I've had The Ugly American around for ages (>3 CurrerBell:) but I also just bought (at Bucks County Bookshop) a Graham Greene 7-in-1 that includes The Quiet American. So I've got both to read now.

>10 CurrerBell: Ha, whichever it was it seems like the Americans were noted in Southeast Asia.

William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American 1½*

A real Cold War relic and, for all its "liberal humanitarianism," a real advocacy piece for the American imperialist duty to resist them durn Commies everywhere on earth or next thing we know, we can kiss the American Way of Life goodbye. (The "Ugly" American, incidentally, is actually one of the authors' "good guys.")

ETA: As a helpful corrective, give something by William Appleman Williams a try. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, which I read a half-century ago back in college, would be a good choice.

Postcards from Nam, by Uyen Nicole Duong is a novel that begins with the evacuation of Saigon and ends with the author posing the question: can we ever all be united again? Mimi is a young Vietnamese woman living in the U.S. practicing law. She ritually receives postcards from Nam (a real person she grew up with in South Vietnam). Mimi sets out to find out the fate of Nam but has difficulty, even years later, getting people to tell the truth of the evacuation and the fate of the boat people. This book read like a memoir for the first half, but fell apart in the second half when the answers to Mimi's questions were never answered. The last 3-5 pages seem like they don't even belong in the book. 114 pages 2 1/2 stars

Ok so there was a novel from a few years ago that I loved but can't think of the title. Vietnames young woman living in America searches for her father in Vietnam. He was a famous artist and disappeared and likely was killed for his political beliefs. Much of the book also concerns a elderly man who has a Pho cart and his fight over the restaurants that compete with him.
Any ideas?

>14 cindydavid4: : Cindy, Is it The Beauty of Humanity Movement? I haven't read it, but it seems to have the things you mentioned.

I picked up Chinaman's chance for a re-read because I had a vague memory of a plan to dig up two million dollars in the garden of the US embassy in Saigon, buried there on the night they left Vietnam. This was a minor plotline though, but since the main characters spent a large part of their lives in South East Asia. And the next book, Out on the rim, is set in the Philippines.

>15 countrylife: yes thats it! Its really the first book I have read deaing with post war vietnam. I liked how the two time periods in the book worked - they are woven together, to make a story of discovery. Loved the character of Maggie, but even more so, of Huang, the Pho seller who is so much more. In fact I'd love a book just about him. Anyway really recommend this book. (Thanks for remembering the title!)

Oh, Gibb wrote another book that I really enjoyed Sweetness in the Belly has nothing to do with this topic but just as well written as the above book.

I didn't do much this weekend, but I finished Out on the rim, set in the Philippines.

I wasn't able to find a book set in southeast Asia in my stacks. It isn't an area that I usually read about. I found The Quiet American in the library. It was about Vietnam in the war torn days prior to the American involvement which made the area and the war so well known in the Western World.

It was a short story, masterfully told. While it was based on the intimate tale of three people it was a precursor to American involvement in microcosm.

The Headmaster's Wager / Vincent Lam
3.5 stars

Percival is a Chinese man living in Vietnam during the war. He runs an English school, and he longs to go home to China. When his son is arrested and later released, Percival arranges to have his son sent to China so that he’ll be safe. As Percival moves on with his life with Vietnemese-French woman Jacqueline, he worries about his son.

This one started really slowly for me. It went back and forth in time, and with a few characters having both Chinese and English names, I was slightly confused, initially. Once we got about a third of the way into the book (and mostly, those characters with multiple names were known by their English names), it picked up for me. This was about the time Percival’s son was son was sent away – or maybe when he was arrested. Anyway, it really picked up for me. There were some parts that were more political that I wasn’t as interested in. I know next-to-nothing about the Vietnam War, so initially I felt like that also made it a bit harder to follow the story, but again, it seemed to get clearer as the book went along. Overall, I’m rating it “good”.

I finished a WWII novel, The Fire by Night by Teresa Messineo. The story follows two army nurses - one on the European front (France, Italy), the other on the Pacific front (Pearl Harbour, Philippines). From field hospitals to internment camps, Messineo creates realistic characters and provides a story filled with powerful descriptions.

I read The King's Last Song by Geoff Ryman for this month's theme. The book intertwines two story lines both set in Cambodia, one is the story of 12th Century ruler Jayarvarman VII, the ruler who united Cambodia and started to build the temples at Angkor. The other storyline involved an archeologist who is kidnapped along with a valuable artifact. This story explores modern day Cambodia as it struggles to emerge from the years of war and violence under the Khymer Rouge. I found this to be fascinating look at Cambodian culture both past and present although the book did tend to get bogged down due to the immense amount of information it was passing along.

Meandered my way through Vietnam with David Bergen's The Time In Between. The writing is exquisite and I do tend to like introspective novels. Even though Bergen has done an excellent job to try and explain the legacy of Vietnam, his characters and the random situations that absorb their time in Vietnam leads me to believe that he and I just do not seem to be on the same page when it comes to what works to engage a reader like me. Oh well. Onwards to the next book. ;-)

I just finished Graham Greene's The Quiet American 4**** (in omnibus edition) – wa-a-a-ay better than The Ugly American, but of course Greene was a short-list Nobelist. I'll have to get around to the other six novels in the omnibus edition. I'm not sure if I ever read anything by Greene decades ago, but to my recollection The Quiet American is a first and I do want to read more of him, both his "thrillers" and his "religious" novels.

>25 CurrerBell: I read The Quiet American too and I was very impressed by Greene's writing.

My reads for this month's theme were:

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (Vietnam) - 4 stars
Beautiful writing about the ugliness of war, unreliable narrator, unrelenting horrors endured by those who suffered through it.

Miss Burma, Charmaine Craig (Burma before it was Myanmar) - 4.5 stars, highly recommended.
War, political intrigue, written in such a way that your sympathies are entirely with the Karen, but knowing, because of the name of the country now, that it would not turn out well for them.

Because the NYTimes review so succinctly covers the important points of the book, I'm copying it here:

“Miss Burma” spans nearly 40 years of Burmese history, from 1926 to 1965. The story begins when Burma is still a British colony and unfolds over the course of World War II and the Japanese invasion, the country’s tumultuous early years of independence from colonial rule, and the subsequent military dictatorship that seized power in 1962. Given this backdrop, it is, of necessity, a novel of big themes — of identity, belonging and trust....“Miss Burma” also serves as a much-needed recalibration of history, one that redresses the narrative imbalance by placing other ethnic, non-Burmese points of view at the center of its story....In reimagining the extraordinary lives of her mother and grandparents, Craig produces some passages of exquisitely precise description...If at times the doling out of history lessons feels a tad heavy-handed, with characters occasionally succumbing to soliloquy or unlikely moments of narrative self-awareness, it is ultimately forgivable: The context in which “Miss Burma” is set is not part of a common well of knowledge. By resurrecting voices that are seldom heard on a wider stage, Craig’s novel rescues Benny from his own foretelling of oblivion and brings one of Burma’s many lost histories to vivid life.

Thank you for this theme, Judy. I don't think I would otherwise have ever read this book. And I'm really glad I did!

>27 countrylife:, I use 2 chapters of O'Briens book in my U.S. history class when I teach about Vietnam. Excellent book!

This is one of my favourite regions to read about but I just didn't find time to read a book for this month. Sorry Judy. My reading mojo has gone into hibernation.

>25 CurrerBell: & >26 Familyhistorian: I have only read one Graham Greene book, Brighton Rock which I highly recommend, but I do have a couple of his on my shelves (Stamboul Train and The Power and the Glory but it sounds like I need to add The Quiet American as well.

>27 countrylife: Great to hear that you enjoyed Miss Burma Cindy as I have that one on my library list. I agree with you about The Things They Carried, it's a book that has a strong impact on the reader.

>29 Roro8: Ro, I sure hope you find your reading mojo soon!