EXIT VISA

by Marcus Clark

EXIT VISA is a factual novel about the aftermath of the Vietnam war, a vivid and gripping narrative, it chronicles the horrors experienced by those who fled after the fall of Saigon

We have all seen movies about Vietnam. But have you ever noticed, none of them tell you what happened when the war ended? What happened to the population when the communists took over? Why did hundreds of thousands of people flee? What happened in Kampuchea that led to two million people dying?

EXIT VISA gives vivid descriptions of the last days of the Vietnam war; the murder of the Kampucheans during Year Zero; working on the Ho Chi Minh Trail; living in Saigon after the communists took over; the fleeing of ’boat people’ from Vietnam; the boat journey to Malaysia; resettlement in Australia. This is one of the few books published (in English) that describes these events through Vietnamese eyes.

390 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Marcus Clark

I was born in the mid-1940s, and grew up in Sydney, since then I have lived in various cities in Australia.

I became interested in writing because I loved to read. I joined the local library when I was eight years old, and rarely stopped reading.

Perhaps I was influenced to write because my name was (almost) identical to a famous Australia writer: Marcus Clarke. Although he died long before I was born, during the 1950s he was probably the most famous of all Australian authors. He wrote a few books, but the most striking was For The Term of His Natural Life-- a story of a wrongly convicted man, sent from
England to be imprisoned in Australia under the most brutal conditions.

Before I even got to my teens, adults would always ask was I related to Marcus Clarke. No I was not, but perhaps it started my thinking
that I could write books.

At the age of 17 I was reading copiously, and at the same time I was wondering what career path I should take. I had already embarked on an apprenticeship as a telephone technician, but that was not where my head was. The work was okay, boring mostly, but many jobs are. It seemed mechanical, repetitive, and of little real value. In retrospect, I see that it was of value-- it was the hardware of the internet.

The problem for me was, that day to day, it was not connected with the greater world where my thoughts were. I was interested in the things that were shaping the world: history, ideas, philosophy, discoveries ... not just physical but mental discoveries, such as hypnosis, suggestion, psychology.

At 17 I had read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Brave New World, any number of books on the Occult/ Mysticism, and novels of all kinds. Unfortunately Ayn Rand and Occultism were never going to be reconciled to each other. Yet I could see value in both philosophies. (Just not at the same time!)

But in writing, it could all come together. I could explore ideas, and create characters who would be subjected to interacting with other characters. And I would be connected with books that I loved.

So that's why I wrote. That's why I still write. I write because I become passionate about contemporary history, about ideas, events, people.

As an example, back in the late 1970's I started reading newspaper reports about Vietnamese boat people who were fleeing the harsh regimes in Vietnam and Kampuchea, their boats were attacked by pirates as many as ten different times before they reached Malaysia. The women were raped, children thrown overboard, men murdered, they were robbed again and again, even their food and clothes were stolen by the pirates.

I began to gather information about the situation in Kampuchea and Vietnam. While Australian and American troops were in Vietnam, there were plenty of reporters, cameramen, and TV crews, but after 1975 their was little information getting out. But it did come out from the refugees fleeing.
And that became the basis of my book EXIT VISA.

There are literally more than a thousand books written about Vietnam in English. Unfortunately most of them were written by combat soldiers or journalists. They nearly all told the story from that perspective. Very few (in English) ever told the story from the Vietnamese point of view.

And that is what is different about my book Exit Visa. Although it is a novel, it was drawn from the lives of the oppressed. When it was being published (1989) the publisher asked me when I was in Vietnam. I said, I've never been there. He looked puzzled. But because I had never been there, I was able to write the novel not about my experiences, but about the Vietnamese experiences. It made a world of difference.