TWILIGHT TERRITORY

A sweeping first novel of love, war, and resistance in post-World War II Japanese-occupied Vietnam, by the award-winning author of Catfish and Mandala.

The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In a small Vietnamese fishing village, Thuy ekes out a living with her aunt, cousin, and two-year-old daughter. But when Thuy meets Japanese major Yamazaki Takeshi, to her surprise, she comes to find a strange kinship with him. A wounded veteran with a good heart, he grows to resent the Empire for what it has taken?and the promises it has failed to keep. As the Viet Minh begin to battle the French and Takeshi risks his life for the Resistance, Thuy and her family are drawn into the conflict, with devastating consequences. A lushly panoramic novel, by turns gritty and profoundly moving, Twilight Territory is a war story and a love story that offers a fascinating perspective on Vietnam's struggles to break free of its French colonial past. Andrew X. Pham is a journalist and author who has been a Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Whiting Writers' Award and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He lives in Bangkok and California.