Review of Twilight Territory by Andrew X. Pham

As of late, at the time of typing this in Fall 2024 (yes, this is probably scheduled to go out much later due to the sheer amount of backlog I’ve been trying to weed through), I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do as a creator to diversify the kinds of content and literature I am consuming in my daily life. This has been a very important part of my blog and life, as I really want to consume more perspectives.

That said, in the book world I realized I was falling into a very specific pattern of what I was reading. A lot of it is literary fiction and nonfiction within the realm of history, which is a lot of what you can notice on my blog, but it was also a ton of AAPI perspectives from East Asia. I want to branch out more, so I’m trying to practice more intentionality here.

I was in my library, in the new fiction section, when I saw a copy of Twilight Territory. It was clearly Vietnamese background to me from the front cover, so I picked it up. It was the synopsis that led me to bring the book home and read it—I knew I haven’t read a ton of stories from the Vietnam War, which is a major weak point.

It took about three days to get through this novel, which was an interesting read. Let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much!

After falling in love with a Japanese major, a woman finds herself sucked more into the conflict of colonial Vietnam.

Our main character in this novel is Tuyet, who lives in a fishing village inside of Vietnam with her family members and young daughter. Life is quaint and normal for her, but there’s already a sense of unease because of the global conflicts Vietnam has been witnessing. Not only has it been colonized by the French, making it a colonial project, but there’s also a World War knocking right outside their door.

Things change for Tuyet when she meets a Japanese major named Yamazaki Takeshi. Takeshi and her seem to have a familiar rhythm pretty quickly, and she learns how he has come to dislike the Japanese Empire and what they stand for in this war. They marry, deciding to start their lives together.

When the war ends, it seems like that there is going to be peace in their lives. Tuyet and Takeshi live quite luxuriously for Vietnamese standards at the time, and he doesn’t go back to Japan despite the opportunity to do so.

Takeshi is smitten with the resistance against the French colonizers though, which sets the next major conflict of their lives. If it comes to it, he’s willing to leave behind his life as a Japanese army officer in order to fight for Vietnamese sovereignty, and if you know your history, you can kind of guess where this will go even further down the road, even after the events of the novel.

But for now, slowly and surely the resistance cranks up the violence to resist their oppressors, and Tuyet is going to get caught up in the violence. As Takeshi brings them to the mountains, away from the comforts of the nice furniture and goods they had, the family has to flee before they become killed, too.

The French aren’t going to go down without a fight—that’s obvious from the beginning. But hard decisions are going to be coming Tuyet’s way, especially when the conflict comes right int front of her doorstep. What happens next is absolutely devastating for the family, bringing in even more questions about how they got to this point.

I think something very important to note about this novel is that Pham doesn’t sugarcoat or hide the atrocities that happened during this period of time.

While some people appreciate content warnings, I think it was kind of hand in hand for what to expect of a historical fiction novel—this is unfortunately the reality of living here at this point of time. I wish it was different, but I can see how someone else might have a problem with these depictions.

Overall Thoughts

This was a good read for my needs—I wanted to read a narrative about the events leading up to the Vietnam War, and I got what I expected from it. I can see how the writing might not appeal to some though, for the reason I mentioned before, but also because it tells a lot about the history of the period.

It worked for me because I wanted to know those facts and what happened, but with the fictional bend. Regardless, our main character is such a brave woman, and this is capturing what life was like for pretty ordinary people during this conflict ridden time.

I’d say go read this one if you’re interested. Give it a chance, see what it has to offer. Taste is so subjective, so don’t let online reviews try to influence you too much.

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