Twilight Territory: A Novel

by Andrew X. Pham

Overview

A sweeping first novel of love, war, and resistance in post–World War II 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 the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago.

The day Tuyet meets Japanese major Yamazaki Takeshi is inauspicious and stifling, with no relief from the sand-stirring wind. But to her surprise, she feels not fear or wariness, but a strange kinship. Tuyet is guarded, knowing how the townspeople might whisper, yet is drawn to Takeshi’s warmth all the same. A wounded veteran with a good heart, Takeshi 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, Tuyet and her family are drawn into the conflict, with devastating consequences.

A lushly panoramic novel, by turns gritty and profoundly moving, Twilight Territory is at once a war story and a love story that offers a fascinating perspective on Vietnam’s struggles to break free of its French colonial past. At its heart is one woman’s struggle for independence and her country’s liberation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324064848
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	01/23/2024
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	66,194
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

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.

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/27/2023

Vietnam during WWII and immediately after provides the backdrop for this transportive novel of love and resistance from Pham (Catfish and Mandala). In 1942, Tuyet is a divorced single mother living with her aunt and cousin in the small fishing village of Phan Thiet. There, she meets Maj. Yamazaki Takeshi, who is part of the Japanese occupation. Despite their differences, an unlikely friendship springs up between the two and eventually blossoms into love, marriage, and family. When the war is over, Takeshi decides to join the Viet Minh resistance against the French, who have retaken the country. Tuyet goes into hiding with her aunt and children as Takeshi’s cadre embarks on bloody raids against the colonial forces. As the war continues, both sides commit acts of savagery, with the lives of Tuyet and her family always in the balance. Combining the sensuality of Marguerite Duras with the revolutionary politics of Andre Malraux, Pham describes the ordeals faced by Tuyet and Takeshi in the most viscerally harrowing of terms, creating two memorable characters whose relationship is equal parts romantic and sacrificial. With captivating force, Pham brings to life a lesser-known aspect of the tragic history of Vietnam. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Set during the Japanese occupation of Indochina and its bloody aftermath, this novel of war is nimbly embroidered with a marriage story."

The New Yorker

"A sensual fever dream of a novel. Compulsively readable. Much like Marguerite Duras, Pham illuminates parts of Vietnam’s lesser-known history through the complicated lives of its people."

Tatjana Soli

"Deeply empathetic, heart-wrenching, and moving, Twilight Territory highlights the devastating impact of colonization on both the colonizers and the colonized. With his iconic poetic prose, Andrew X. Pham gifts us an epic love story that conquers wars, horror, and human greed to offer us hope and light."

Nguyen Phan Que Mai

"The tragic love story between a Vietnamese woman and a Japanese soldier.... Pham’s straightforward, unpretentious prose is used to devastating effect.... Searing."

Violet Kupersmith

★ 2023-12-06
A novel of love and loss, betrayal and war during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam.

France has ruled the colony of Indochina for three generations by the time the Japanese army invades. In 1942, Le Tuyet is a young, divorced mother who confronts a local French bureaucrat and catches the attention of Yamazaki Takeshi, a major in the Imperial Japanese Army. The major admires her beauty and spirit and eventually begins to earn her trust. The two honorable people both speak the language of loss and loneliness, and they fall in love and eventually have children. “They had all that could be good and kind and sweet between two people,” and she hopes their spirits will be “unassailable by the evil to come.” But tragedy inevitably abounds, with many Viets resisting occupation by either foreign power. French colonial official Gaspar Feraud bears a deep grudge against Takeshi and asks a colleague to “help me…get [him].” Readers may lose themselves in the quiet scenes so rich in detail, and yet the violence and degradation come as a punch in the gut. On a canvas ceiling is “a constellation of blood.” A rape is horrific, the retribution medieval. Conditions in a women’s prison are grim, with rats and lice being far from the only problems. The story extends beyond Japan’s surrender and into the early 1950s as the Resistance against the French evolves into the group called the Viet Minh. Perhaps Takeshi can bring his family to his beloved Hokkaido, where the cherry trees blossom in the spring and there will be peace. Or perhaps not. “In the name of the lady Buddha, [Tuyet] would fight the French until her last heartbeat.” Indeed, a friend says that “her totem is the tiger.” Little does Tuyet know that driving out the French is only the beginning; the true cataclysm is to come, when the United States can’t leave well enough alone—but that’s another story. The main characters are deeply sympathetic in their struggles against continual heartbreak.

An engrossing story set amid a rich historical background.

Kirkus Reviews