Jonathan Mirsky
A Right Way to Remember?
Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War
By Viet Thanh Nguyen
Harvard University Press 374pp £20.95 order from our bookshop
The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam
By Christopher Goscha
Allen Lane 633pp £30 order from our bookshop
In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war. Nguyen, who teaches English and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California, was brought to the US as a small boy after the war by his parents, Vietnamese Catholics who feared persecution by the victorious communist movement. His fundamental point is that winners and losers of wars remember them differently; neither side cares to know about, much less to imagine, its adversary’s losses and continuing anguish. In short, there is an unwillingness to extend forgiveness to one’s enemy and a tendency to deny that one’s own side also behaved ruthlessly.
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