Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2010
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
It's 1967, and Susan Gifford is one of the first female correspondents on assignment in Saigon, dedicated to her job and passionately in love with an American TV reporter. Son is a Vietnamese photographer anxious to get his work into the American press. Together they cover every aspect of the war from combat missions to the workings of field hospitals. Then one November morning, narrowly escaping death during an ambush, Susan and Son find themselves the prisoners of three Vietcong soldiers who have been separated from their unit.
Now, under constant threat from American air strikes, helpless in the hands of the enemy, they face the daily hardships of the jungle together. As time passes, the bond between Susan and Son deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult for Son to harbor the secret that could have profound consequences for them both.
"Starred Review. Vivid and and powerful…Leimbach masterfully conjures the hothouse atmosphere of foreign correspondents in Saigon in the late 1960s." - Publishers Weekly
"The Man from Saigon is stunning—so visual, so sensual and sharply realized. Almost nothing else could interest me in another book about that war, but by writing about a woman reporter in Vietnam, Leimbach makes its dark history brilliantly new." - Karen Connelly, author of The Lizard Cage
"You might question the ambition of a contemporary novelist electing to set a story in the Vietnam War era, but after you find (as I did) that you simply cannot put down The Man from Saigon, you question no more. Leimbach’s mastery of place, of the scents, sounds, terrors and sorrows of that time reminded me as perhaps only a great novel can that that we are never done with a war even when it is long over, and that only wars and love endure." - Dr. Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“Leimbach does an impressive job of evoking the frenetic chaos of Saigon and the claustrophobia and suffocating humidity of the dense jungle, while her story has a vivid immediacy as it flashes backwards and forwards in a deliberately disorienting fashion. The result is intense and gripping.” - Daily Mail (UK)
"Emotionally rich, viscerally intense, the novel revisits a familiar terrain but finds ways to see it anew." - The Independent (UK)
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marti Leimbach is the author of several novels, including the international bestseller Dying Young, which was made into a major motion picture starring Julia Roberts. Born in Washington, D.C., she attended the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Irvine, and Harvard University. Her new novel Age of Consent is to be published in June, 2016. She currently lives in England and teaches at Oxford University's Creative Writing program.
Author Interview
Link to Marti Leimbach's Website
Name Pronunciation
Marti Leimbach: lime-bark
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