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Books : Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy TramIn association with Amazon.comfrom: Random House Audio  Dewey Decimal Number: 959.70437 EAN: 9780739354483 Format: Abridged, Audiobook ISBN: 0739354485 Label: Random House Audio Manufacturer: Random House Audio Number Of Items: 1 Publication Date: September 11, 2007 Publisher: Random House Audio Release Date: September 11, 2007 Studio: Random House Audio Sales Rank: 4464608 Related Items:
Editorial Review: Product Description: At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and of her challenges in the face of the war’s ceaseless fury. The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram’s death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, “Don’t burn this one. . . . It has fire in it already.” Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years. In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram’s elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation’s previous generations. Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinary document that narrates one woman’s personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the most dire of circumstances—told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Extraordinary Book!In October 2008 I listened to a program on NPR, "To the Best of Our Knowledge" about women in war. One of the audio articles was an interview with the U.S. soldier who saved Dang Thuy Tram's diary from being destroyed and who was instrumental in having the diary translated and published as "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace". As a U.S. Navy veteran of the Vietnam War I am aware that I am one of the enemy Thuy hated with such passion, and someone who was in part responsible for the painful life ... Read More Rating: - Audio edition is excellent Kim Mai Guest gives an authentic presentation of Tram's diary, making the book very accessible. I especially like hearing the names of places and people pronounced accurately and hearing the depth of feeling in the author's voice. Rating: - Cultural Understanding The story behind this story is more germane to me. It shows the common thread of conscience and patriotism that cultures & mankind share. Neil Alexander a photographer/film maker is working on a documentary that adds a whole new dimension to this story. [...] Rating:  - The other side of the river.......to use Blasé Pascal's phrase, relating to his rhetorical question concerning his right to kill another man, just because he lived on that opposite bank. Dang Thuy Tram's diaries are an important addition to that small group of Vietnamese books concerning the American War which have appeared in English, and include Bao Ninh's "The Sorrow of War," and Duong Thu Huong's "Novel Without a Name." Alain-Fournier was another great writer whose life was cut far too short by war during the ... Read More Rating:  - Highly touted bestseller in Vietnam but not the same in the U.S.Dang Thuy Tram's chronicle, in its English materialization, is perhaps the only Vietnam-related book to touch all sides of that tragedy. It was difficult to keep the incredible passage of her pages, the back story, in the background of this much-anticipated war diary. In March 2005, just prior to the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, two Vietnam veteran brothers gave a nondescript and scarcely attended talk at Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center. Their presentation was about ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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