The West knows, I think, extraordinarily little about the Vietcong… The human motives, the internal struggle, the bitter resolution – these are the things I have attempted to record here.” So writes Truong Nhu Tang, who was a foremost political agitator for the Vietcong, a founder member of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and a cabinet minister in the Provisional Revolutionary Government.

This book tells the story of his life as a revolutionary, a struggle remarkable for its determination, courage, dedication and immense personal sacrifice. It tells, too, the story of a proud people fighting against foreign domination and gives a revealing account of the political background to the Vietnam war from a new and illuminating perspective. […] Tang describes his experiences, which are often deeply painful, with eloquence: the first signs of internal conflict within the Vietcong; the time when, not long after the triumphant ceasefire of April 1975, he watched the replacement of one oppressive regime with another, as North Vietnamese communists swept through the country on a wave of arrests, outrages, and ‘re-education’ programmes for the Southern bourgeoisie which turned into lengthy detentions (some of which continue today); the devastating disillusionment he suffered, leading him to turn down the great honour of a post in the government of unified Vietnam; and the desperation and bitter irony of his escape as one of the many thousands of Vietnamese boat people, hoping for rescue by the Americans.

“Journal of a Vietcong” is filled with fascinating revelations about the realities of the Vietnam war; it reveals also the courage and endurance of the Vietnamese people, who withstood unthinkable individual hardship, as well as one man’s tragic sacrifice in the name of freedom.