Hanoi, adieu - A Bittersweet Memoir of a Frenchman in Indochina

Hanoi, adieu - A Bittersweet Memoir of a Frenchman in Indochina

by Mandaley Perkins

Fourth Estate, HK$155

Michel L'Herpiniere was 16 when, in September 1936, he moved with his mother and French Colonial Army officer father to Hanoi. Madagascar, Morocco, Vietnam - young Michel's life had been a nomadic one, but Hanoi was a city he would quickly grow to love. He would form friendships, marry and have a family of his own, building a business after several traumatic years in the army.

By the time he received his discharge papers in January 1941, he had decided to stay, 'to make Indochina my life'. He belonged - of that he was sure. Greater insight would be a long time coming. 'I did not know then how a country that one did not belong to could break a man's spirit. But then for a long time I couldn't see that I did not belong to Indochina ... We were two cultures combined effortlessly on the streets of Hanoi in an enchanting melange of east and west. At least that was how I saw it. But I was living a lie. We were all living a lie.'

Hanoi, adieu is L'Herpiniere's recollections of his Vietnam years, a posthumous memoir published two years after his death. The memories, the voice are his, the words those of his stepdaughter, a Brisbane writer whose work has been inspired by her family's experiences of Southeast Asia's colonial history.

This is a first-person account of the final years of French rule in Vietnam. It's a story of life in Hanoi during the second world war and the Japanese occupation, of the rise of Vietnamese nationalism and of the skirmishes, negotiations, treaties and puppet governments that characterised the years until the final, decisive battle at Dien Bien Phu. It's told through the eyes of a man who was ultimately on the losing side, but supplemented by an account of history that is, presumably, the result of Perkins' own research, although no sources are acknowledged.