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Lost Armies
Emmett Wheeler, a Vietnam veteran teaching English to Vietnamese refugees in Maryland, searches for his boyhood friend Dennis Slagel and ends up falling in love with Xuan, Dennis's Vietnamese lover
150 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1988
2 people want to read
About the author
Wayne Karlin
27 books18 followersWayne Karlin has published nine novels: The Genizah, A Wolf by the Ears, Marble Mountain, The Wished-For Country, Prisoners, Lost Armies, Us, The Extras, Crossover; a collection of short stories, Memorial Days, and three works of non-fiction: Rumors and Stones, War Movies, and Wandering Souls: Journeys with the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam, as well as poetry, stories and articles in literary journals and newspapers. He has received six State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction, two Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts), the Paterson Prize in Fiction for 1999, the Vietnam Veterans of American Excellence in the Arts Award in 2005, and the 2019 Juniper Prize for Fiction for A Wolf by the Ears. Several of his books have been published in the U.K. and in translation in Vietnam, Italy, Denmark, Holland and Sweden.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2019
A thrilling and equally painful read. One of the rare novels written by an American that highlights the post-war trauma suffered by both the Vietnamese and American sides. Both sides are represented by complex human beings who are haunted by their own ghosts of war. And it seems they share the same ghosts - the ghosts that penetrate their lives, sucking their souls, making them part of the ghosts' world.
As much as the war divided Vietnam and America, this novel proves that the war bonds our countries and our people together, in pain, in memories, and in regrets.
The words of Tho, a Vietnamese character in the novel, are so true: "You Americans have the freedom to invent your own lives - it gives you the illusion you can invent other people's lives also. Invent and then grown tired of your inventions. You came to us to kills us and to love us, all to prove some idea you had about yourselves. But we were nothing to you. Only your dreams, your shadows, your whores."
It takes the courage of a true writer to write Lost Armies. Wayne Karlin penned this book with not just his own experiences and his imagination, but with the tremblings of his heartstrings. I feel those tremblings on the words and I want to do something, to change the horrible fact that America keeps sending its innocent young men into wars and into their deaths, if not physical then mental.
As much as the war divided Vietnam and America, this novel proves that the war bonds our countries and our people together, in pain, in memories, and in regrets.
The words of Tho, a Vietnamese character in the novel, are so true: "You Americans have the freedom to invent your own lives - it gives you the illusion you can invent other people's lives also. Invent and then grown tired of your inventions. You came to us to kills us and to love us, all to prove some idea you had about yourselves. But we were nothing to you. Only your dreams, your shadows, your whores."
It takes the courage of a true writer to write Lost Armies. Wayne Karlin penned this book with not just his own experiences and his imagination, but with the tremblings of his heartstrings. I feel those tremblings on the words and I want to do something, to change the horrible fact that America keeps sending its innocent young men into wars and into their deaths, if not physical then mental.
June 23, 2008
too convoluted of a plot for my taste.
Vietnam war novel
Vietnam war novel
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews