Book Recommendations
River of Time
By Jon Swain
Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Travel, Asia, Southeast, Special Interest, Literary, Military, History, Wars & Conflicts, Vietnam War, Political Science, Political Ideologies, Communism, Post-Communism & Socialism, Modern, 20th Century, General, Historical, Essays & Travelogues | 304 pages
1 recommendation
Between 1970 and 1975 Jon Swain, the English journalist portrayed in David Puttnam's film, The Killing Fields, lived in the lands of the Mekong river. This is his account of those years, and the way in which the tumultuous events affected his perceptions of life and death as Europe never could. He also describes the beauty of the Mekong landscape - the villages along its banks, surrounded by mangoes, bananas and coconuts, and the exquisite women, the odours of opium, and the region's other face - that of violence and corruption.
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Mike Johnson
"I read this book several years before visiting Cambodia and agreed entirely with the blurb on the back cover : "It is hard to see how a better book could be written of this tumultuous and utterly disastrous period." It not only describes the horrors of the killing fields but it is also an account of the author's passionate love affair with Vietnamese girl which ends in disillusionment. A few years later I travelled with Explore to Cambodia and visited the killing fields museum and met the sole survivor of the Khmer Rouge prison. I found Cambodia to be a welcoming place. Its people had survived those terrible times and were so friendly towards travellers. I recommended this book to my Explore group and hope you will read it too!"
