Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist - Dang Thuy Tram - as a vibrant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions.
She wrote straight from the heart and, because of this, her diary has been a huge bestseller in Vietnam - 350,000 copies sold in 2005 alone. Rider brings the first English translation, in book form, to the Commonwealth markets.
Review
"Thuy Tram's diary has been described as "the Vietnamese Anne Frank", combining vivid depiction of the violence and dreadful conditions of the conflict with a moving, very personal account'" (Glasgow Herald)
"Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a book to be read by all and included in any course on the literature of war" (Chicago Tribune)
"The most compelling, honest account of a conflict that killed, by some estimates, between two and three million Vietnamese and other Asians, as well as 58,000 Americans...Raw with human emotions and unvarnished by government propaganda." (Independent)
"A personal dialogue, a place to shelter her soul and her spirit...Raw emotion is manifest in the diary." (Observer)
"Remarkable...This is an important and profoundly moving book, which redresses the one-sided macho and gun-toting coverage of the Vietnam War." (Sydney Morning Herald)
