Shadows and Wind

Robert Templer

Images of the Vietnam War have proved to be among the most enduring of this century - the naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, bodies lying in the ditches of My Lai. These images and the subsequent myths that have surrounded Vietnam have stifled changes in the way it is seen. For many Vietnam remains a war, not a country. SHADOWS AND WIND sets the record right and underlines the fact that life in Vietnam did not end when the helicopters left.

The theme of SHADOWS AND WIND will be the Vietnamese identity, how it has re-emerged in recent years not as a violent force but one that has sustained a country and more importantly sustained individuals. Chapters cover a broad series of topics: literature, history art and architecture, politics, religion, food, the foreign perception of Vietnam, the Vietnamese perception of foreigners, an emerging popular culture that delights in beauty contests and pompadoured magicians, the Vietnamese overseas and their role in their home country, propaganda and government control and the reaction to that, the lingering mythology of the war and the changing Vietnamese perception of the conflict.