Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist - Dang Thuy Tram - as a vibrant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions.
She wrote straight from the heart and, because of this, her diary has been a huge bestseller in Vietnam - 350,000 copies sold in 2005 alone. Rider brings the first English translation, in book form, to the Commonwealth markets.
But there is more: how the diary came to light is also an unusual story in its own right. Fred Whitehurst was a US intelligence officer on the scene just after Dang Thuy Tram was shot. He came across the diary and, instead of burning it there and then, took it home. His brother translated it and so began an odyssey that took 35 years, to find Thuy Tram's family in Vietnam, and return the small brown book to them. Remarkably, in 2005, Fred Whitehurst tracked down the young doctor's mother who graciously accepted it from this former GI who, as a result, was able to complete his own journey of reconciliation after years of bitterness as a Vietnam vet.
last night I dreamed of peace
As much as I wanted to enjoy this book I just couldn't get into it. I think that in theory it is an important book, it allows us tounderstand a side of the Vietnam War which we were not witness too, and given it's 'Anne Frank appeal' I had high hopes. But there are three main problems. 1. it is very hard to understand what is actually happening at the time it was written. 2. the footnotes (and like already mentioned there are a lot) take up a large majority of the book and often only add to the confusion from point one. 3. all the author ever wrote about were situations which I couldn't comprehend, even with the footnotes, and about how she loved everyone she met but most people misinterpreted that love. I know you should only review a book once you have read it, but I honestly couldn't finish reading this book. I tried and did get past half-way, but it was just so monotonous and confusing that I gave up.
sarah, 19/12/2008
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
Very disappointed to find this book is full of footnotes. In one instance a third of the page is taken up by just one of them! Feels like I m reading a textbook. Unfortunately I have had to put the book aside after reading about 20 pages because the footnotes are detracting me from getting involved in the story.
cindy, 17/12/2008
