Vietnam War Fiction

This fall, documentary filmmakers, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, aired a new PBS series about the Vietnam War. Their 10-year project has culminated in an excellent 18-hour, 10-part documentary. If you have been watching this documentary, you may be interested deepening your understanding of this war even further. Below is a selected list of fiction written about the Vietnam War and its legacy. Two of the authors listed below have featured interviews in the PBS documentary.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Heroic young men carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey in the heart of darkness.

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
In a story by a decorated Marine veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his fellow Marines venture into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and fight their way into manhood. They meet not only external obstacles but also internal ones, including racial tension, competing ambitions and underhanded officers.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles.

The Quiet American by Graham Green
The setting of this novel is Saigon in the violent years when the French were desperately trying to hold their footing in the Far East. The principal characters are a skeptical British Journalist, his attractive Vietnamese mistress, and an eager young American sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission.

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli
Helen Adams, an American combat photographer during the Vietnam War, captures the wrenching chaos of battle on film and finds herself torn between the love of two men, one an American war correspondent and the other his Vietnamese underling.

The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao
A tale set during the decades following the Vietnam War is told through the experiences of a Vietnamese-American family, including former South Vietnamese soldier Minh and his daughter, Mai, who move to a close-knit immigrant community in Virginia where they confront devastating secrets.