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At what point should a journalist transmute first-hand experience into fiction? Where does one draw the line between what can be reported as fact and what should probably be reported some other way, even if one has seen it with
The confrontation is immediate—ia hundred cluster bombs suspended from the ceiling on fishing wire. This deadly mobile of “bombies”, as the locals call them, symbolises the lethal legacy of Laos’s Vietnam War experience. It is the display that greets visitors
Correspondents who covered the fall of Saigon gathered on a rooftop bar in Ho Chi Minh City last Wednesday to honour the fortieth anniversary of the end of a war that made many of their names. Numbers were down to
In January, Picador reissued Michael Herr’s classic book on the Vietnam War, Dispatches, and with today marking the 40th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon now seems the perfect time to revisit the book’s pyrotechnic prose and harrowing, still-relevant lessons.
Has it really been forty years since there wasn’t enough room on the last chopper out? The streets of Ho Chi Minh City are, if not exactly festooned, then at least rather heavily decorated with banners and other displays attesting
The men at the Can Diyarbakir ticket desk in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, eyed the lapel of my filthy white shirt with a mix of admiration and concern. “We appreciate it very much,” said one, indicating the Kurdish
The car bomb sounded like a car backfiring. I heard it, dismissed it, and went back to sleep. It was only a few hours later, as I sat at the window of Erbil’s Hotel Merci, looking out over a two-story
A few weeks back, in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, the US-led campaign against Islamic State was compared to the Spanish Civil War. This seemed appropriate enough. When I was in Iraq two months ago, I thought a