Dang Thuy Tram, the Vietnamese Anne Frank

This book is a bestseller in Vietnam. The diaries (except one) of Dang Thuy Tram were found and supposed to be destroyed. After 35 years, the diaries were brought to the mother of Dang Thuy Tram in Hanoi. 

 

Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. She was killed at the age of 26. She describes her two years active in the middle of the war with all her personal and political struggles. It is a story of hope while hiding and the fragility of life. 

 

Personally, I had to get used to the way Dang Thuy Tram writes and to understand what keeps her mind busy. You will definitely gain cultural understanding, when that is possible in this case, her life lived in such harsh circumstances. With deep felt emotions, what it meant to live during that time. A must-read, when you like to understand more of the Vietnamese people and history.