Customer Reviews

River of Time: A Memoir of Vietnam and Cambodia

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When I first became aware of Swain's book, my initial thought was, "Another war correspondent's attempt to cash in on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Indo-China." I bought the book, but more because of my current mania for the subject, not because I expected much out of it.

Swain began to win me over right away. He begins the book with much the same sentiment as I expressed above. The author himself wonders what he can add to what's been written before.

The answer is: A lot.

Swain's style fits the subject: factual, but with humanity; horrified without being overwhelmed. The author's self-professed love for Indo-China is evident. The depth of his feelings enabled me to see and feel the end of Indo-China as it had been.

The highlight of the book is the description of the fall of Phnom Penh and the immediate aftermath. I have read several accounts of these events, written by Cambodians and Westerners, and I have seen "The Killing Fields". None of those tellings hold a candle to Swain's description. The misery, chaos, horror, insanity, and inhumanity comes to life in his words.

Swain's work takes it's place among the best of the field.

I feel a little sorry for a few of the reviewers who have gone before me. I think they may be missing the point. The book does not attempt to provide in-depth military facts, nor is it an attempt at writing a 'suspense thriller', nor is it fiction. Rather, it is portrayal of the experiences of one man [and his friends'] during times of conflict [largely] in Indochina. It is a book of truth and emotion, of beauty and futility, of love and war. Ultimately, it is a book about humanity. Jon Swain has done well, and this book would be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone who is interested in human conflict, Indochina or personal accounts of life in times of extremely adverse and uncertain conditions.

"River of Time" is perhaps the most intimate account yet published by the war correspondents and journalists who came of age in Southeast Asia. The author goes to great lengths to reveal all, even aspects which he knows many readers will find personally unflattering. This work is an emotional one totally different in tone from his colleague Robert Sam Anson's more hard-edged but equally distinguished work on the same subject, "War News". Unable to shake his admitted addition to seeking both the truth and personal fame in pursuit of same, Swain abandoned the love of his life for what became yet another hostage experience in Africa. His more recent brushes with death in East Timor show that his one-track obsession with his vocation remains intact. All those who once lost their hearts to Southeast Asia will see a little of themselves in Jon Swain's realistic and accurate self-portrait. A valuable work by a charming an complex man widely admired by his colleagues in the field and by his readers around the world.

Cambodia was beautiful when Swain first arrived and he, a young journalist, relished it all, from the natural beauty of the country to the fine French food and legal opium dens. Trouble was coming though, although no one at that time could have imagined the horror.

Swain also went to Vietnam, which at the time was full of Americans. He rode on helicopters out to the battlefield, helped rescue victims of a bombing in a movie theater, and fell in love. His descriptions and experiences, from a British point of view, adds his own special twist to the vast body of work I have read about Vietnam by Americans.

In spite of the danger, he voluntarily returned to Cambodia to experience the fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge and would have been executed if it were not for the intervention of Dith Pran, the Cambodian journalist who is best known for his role in the movie The Killing Fields. Swain was captive in the French Embassy and experienced the agony of families being torn apart and marched off to their brutal deaths.

All of these experiences are captured in riveting detail and I couldn't put the book down in spite of the gruesome realistic details on every page. There are horrors, adventure and a lust for writing a good story and reporting the truths to the world. I applaud him and the profession of journalism for that.

Fantastic memoir of Jon Swain's time in Indochina, an extremely poignant and personal summary of a tragic war. I purchased this book "for something to read", but found myself moved to tears. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the plight of the Cambodians. Such a great lesson could have been learnt, unfortunately we now see a repeat occurrence in East Timor.

Two decades after his experiences, British journalist Jon Swain reached for his pen -- or keyboard -- to pour his memories into a book. In today's over-saturation of commercial memoirs, surely yet another remembering is superfluous, especially one about the Vietnam War, a subject gnawed to the bone by thousands of other writers. But wait: his interest, Swain assures us, is less in war than in love. The book is about his enduring passion for the Mekong region and its long-suffering peoples who have kept their dignity in the pits of hell. It's around the Mekong that Swain witnessed humanity at its kindest and its most brutal all at the same time. Such is war.

Swain writes evocatively and his book should serve as a handy introduction to Indochina and its travails for foreigners little in the know. But there's this, too, to say about "River of Time": rather than a panorama of scenes and events, Swain provides several vignettes of them (from Saigon at war to Phnom Penh at its fall to the Khmer Rouge and to Bangkok at peace from it all). And that's my gripe about "River of Time." Without clear guiding narrative strings and conclusions, it reads like several touched-up newspaper articles blended together and joined by only one unifying theme: Swain himself. Too bad, because the book is chock-full of revealing anecdotes, thanks to Swain's well-honed eye and prodigious memory (as well as contemporary diary notes). The stories about Vietnamese boat people's suffering at the hands of Thai fishermen-turned-pirates are perhaps the best in the whole book.

But don't let me put you off an interesting, if somewhat lacking read. For all its flaws, "River of Time" is worth your money and time -- if only in whetting your appetite for other books about this hauntingly beautiful but deeply troubled land.

An ideal book for those who were there and wish to relive 1970's Cambodia and Vietnam, or for those who enjoy a lively, interesting and at times shocking read. Jon Swain does an excellent job at explaining the spell Indochina casts on all those that have lived there.

The River of Time is a very compelling read for a number of reasons. It gives the reader a glimpse of a place that no longer exists - Cambodia after Pol Pot would never be the same again. Swain introduces the reader to the sleepy colonial town that was Phnom Penh. Swain's love affair with the country could easily be described as exploitative - opium smoking and whoring his way through his first years there. But you cannot doubt his deep affection for the place. The other interesting aspect of the book is Swain's admitted addiction to adrenaline. He breaks up a perfectly good marriage to go and spend a year kidnapped in Africa. He cannot help himself and must go where "the action is.' He paints himself as a somewhat immoral thrill seeker who uses journalism as an cover for his addiction.

But he is honest about it.

A book you can not put down. An important account of the atrocities of the Cambodian communists and the evilness of mankind. Well-written portraits of fascinating and original personalities, beautiful descriptions of cambodian culture. The book is honest and reveiling in its portrayals of the decadent and thrilling lives of war-time journalists and photographers. It is an important historical account of the misery endured by a beautiful people not long ago.

The book opens with some less-than-successful recollections of the time Swain spent in SE Asia during the wars: it's familiar territory, and his writing is not strong enought to handle the complicated emotions and memories that Michael Herr so successfully managed in Dispatches.

But then the book turns to a fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge. Here Swain shines: his narrative is straightforward -- with little of the mawkishness that mars the opening ruminations -- riveting and horrifying. Swain opted to stay on in Phnom Penh as the Khmer approached and entered the city, and the story he got by staying is . . . well, it's pretty overwhelming.