MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Eagles Of The Republic, The Balloonists, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War
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A portrait of the revolutionary as a young man
RON JACOBS recommends an evocative novel that explores the time that Ho Chi Minh spent in Paris
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[Thomon/CC]
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RITA DI SANTO listens out for the undertow of political film-making at this year’s festival
Faraway the Southern Sky: A Novel
Joseph Andras, Verso, £9.99
IN 1968, as war raged across Vietnam, the Vietnamese revolutionary popularly known as Ho Chi Minh wrote a new year’s message to the worldwide movement against the US war on the Vietnamese.
After somewhat poetically listing the ongoing war crimes of the US military, the letter ended with these words: “We enjoy the support of brothers and friends in the five continents. We shall win and so will you. Thank you for your support for the Vietnamese people.”
I wouldn’t read these words until the fall of that year; my anti-war consciousness was just taking shape. I was 13. I recall that, when I did read them that first time, it was like a light bulb going off. I could no longer consider any Vietnamese as an enemy. To do so would require demonising them — something I could no longer do after reading this simple and honest letter.
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