Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam

by Robert Templer

In Shadows and Wind, Robert Templer paints a fascinating and fresh picture of a country usually viewed with hazy nostalgia or deep suspicion. Here is Hanoi, an increasingly tense and troubled city approaching its millennium but uncertain of its direction. Here are people emerging from a long wilderness of malnutrition, discovering a new lifestyle of leisure and luxury. And everywhere are the anomalies that burst the bubble of optimism: a vastly expensive luxury hotel sitting empty in an unknown town six hours from an international airport; museums crammed with fake exhibits. And there remains the one-party Communist state, still wrapped in secrecy and corruption, and making for an uneasy bedfellow with the rapacious capitalism it now encourages.Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Vietnam and years of research, Robert Templer has produced the first in-depth examination of the problems facing modern Vietnam. Shadows and Wind is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Vietnam that now has emerged from a century of conflict with both foreign powers and with itself.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Asia

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

Author, analyst, expert in climate and conflict, senior consultant at United Nations.

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Templer does an in-depth survey of Vietnamese life in the 1990s, finding very little of which he could approve. At this point in the country's history, Vietnam's Communist Party officials had dug in their heels to keep control :"because we won the war." And already over half the country's people had been born after the war. Maybe two-thirds of the book explores the corruptions, incompetencies and control-freakhood of aging government officials. Around a third remains for Templer's competent reviews of food culture, religion, housing, Chinese minorities, expat communities or restless teenagers.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably out of date now as I read this while traveling Vietnam and it stuck me how much has changed. However, worthwhile reading if you are after a deeper understanding of what has influenced the development of post war Vietnam up to publication of this book.

[Pam Ela · Rating 2 out of 5]

a modern history of Vietnam

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought my copy of this book from a bookseller outside of our hotel in Vietnam in 2001. The bookseller had a little shelf hung from a strap from his neck, and after several days of meeting him there every time we left the hotel (I ended up buying every book he had for sale), my mother and I sat down and had a conversation with him. It turned out that his French was better than his English, so we switched to that language when it helped. The tri-lingual bookseller from a tiny village, doing his best to make money for his family in the big city of Hanoi embodies many of the things discussed in this book.

It took me a long time to pick this book up and read it all the way through, although I have attempted it more than once. The book is in great detail, but some chapters were a great deal more interesting than other. The descriptions of the inner workings of the Party were rather dry and tended to feel repetitive and critical. Some of it, I suppose, is due to my lack of understanding of the structure of the Vietnamese government. Perhaps a short primer on this topic at the very beginning could have saved the reader from getting lost in the forest quite so much.

What is most interesting to me is that this book was written just 3 years before my first visit to Vietnam. Reading it now opens my eyes a bit to the Vietnam that I saw when I first disembarked at Noi Bai International airport in Ha Noi. One wonders what sources Templer relied on most heavily in the writing of this book, and whether their bias moved him in one direction or another. vis a vis the Communist Party in Viet Nam.

The sense of acceleration was in the air on my first two visits in 2001; bigger changes were afoot when I returned in 2006, and even more so in 2010. I haven't had a chance to visit since, but I read the tea leaves, in the form of labels on clothing and other consumer goods. I can only imagine what the intense pressures of globalization and competition with China have wrought on the quaint and charming country that I fell in love with in 2001. I both yearn for and dread my return to the beloved county.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While in Vietnam I picked up an interesting book about contemporary Vietnam called Shadows and Wind by Robert Templer. Anyway, after my first trip to Vietnam I read Stanley Karnow’s excellent history, Vietnam, which focuses on the causes of the war and the aftermath and I felt this might be a follow up of sorts, picking up where Karnow left off. It’s not as contemporary as I’d like-it was published in 1998, but the author has interesting insights to make about the myth of Vietnam, the culture, the generation gap, food, politics, Viet Kieu (exiled or refugee Vietnamese), religion, and everyday life. Albeit the chapters on politics were long and difficult to get through-they came in the middle of the book, which seemed to slow me in my progress. However, I found the opening and closing chapters the most interesting and informative about contemporary Vietnamese society and from what I saw on my last trip to Hanoi-it is still fairly accurate. The Vietnamese are slowing making their way to the usual global consumerism with their pursuit of Honda Dream motorcycles, cell phones, and other consumer goods, but the government has kept economic expansion moving at a trickle compared to other countries. More than half of the population was born after the war and no one ever gave me grief because I was an American. It'll be interesting to see whether or not Vietnam develops an economic model like China.

[Jim Corson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about modern vietnam. There is lots of good information and if you are going there is great information. On the other hand it is often very tedious with ideas rather beatened to death. I skimmed much of the book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative book, seems exhaustively researched by the author, and kind of exhausting to read. Definitely helps inform one's thoughts of the region. This book is clearly a labor of love by Mr. Templer.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readable, thought provoking insights into a country that is impenetrable even to many of us who have lived there

[Ahmar · Rating 4 out of 5]

If only I had picked this up 2 years ago...

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accessible summary of Vietnam's recent history, politics, sociology, and culture.

[Aquavelvaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Can be a little tedious to read, but it delivers as promised a very complete and thorough view of modern Vietnam.

[Jbucher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book. Even though it is a bit out of date, I learned a lot from it.