Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. 1965. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Jean Lart?guy’s admirers (and they are numerous) will find that his new novel is as powerful as The Centurions and The Praetorians. This time his scene is Indo- China and not Algeria. Once again he is brilliantly served by Xan Fielding’s trans- lation. M. Lart?guy writes: ‘This novel is the story of two cities that no longer exist: Hanoi and Saigon. In the Tonkin Delta there is indeed a city that still bears the name of Hanoi just as in the Cochin-China Delta there is another that is still called Saigon. The former is the capital of an authoritarian and bureaucratic republic the latter of an anachronistic and sanctimonious State. They are prudish and hypocritical and though their public gardens are tended and their buildings repainted they have nothing in common with the two halfcaste cities which were born of the union of the white and yellow races and died with their divorce. They were lovely halfcastes unfaithful and affectionate cruel and sensual lazy violent shameless and secretive. Those who loved them and they were legion – caught a disease from them which they have never managed to cure: a sort of yellow fever: a kind of nostalgia which reaches its highest pitch on gloomy evenings or days of dejection. Since the capture of Hanoi by the Viet- minhs and the war of the sects in the streets of Saigon I have had time to become better acquainted with my infection and to come to terms with it. (SP)