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Are you searching for novels about Vietnam—books that don’t just explain the country’s history, but help you feel it? If so, you’re not alone. Many book lists about Vietnam focus on non-fiction, and particularly American, perspectives on the war. While those have their place, they often miss something essential: the voices of Vietnamese people themselves, especially women, whose stories are so often overlooked.
All photos featured on this blog are from my personal travel experiences.
Vietnam’s 20th century was marked by extraordinary upheaval—colonial rule, war, partition, and reunification—all of which left deep cultural and emotional imprints. Fiction can offer a rare intimacy with that past, allowing us to step into lives shaped by conflict, resilience, and change. Reading these stories—especially those written by Vietnamese authors or featuring Vietnamese women as central characters—has given me a much richer understanding of the country and its people.
📚 Useful Reading Accessories for Travellers
Even if you love physical books, there’s no denying that an e-reader—especially a Kindle—is a game-changer for travel. The first time I travelled long-term, back in 2008, Kindles didn’t exist and I had to rely on book swaps across South America. I read a lot of terrible books!
Now, with a Kindle, there’s no more lugging heavy novels or hoping to find something decent at the occasional book swap. I recommend the Kindle Paperwhite — the backlight makes it easy to read at night or on public transport, and the battery life is excellent.
👉 Get the Kindle Paperwhite here
Another must-have for travel readers is a clip-on reading light. Even if you’re in a budget hostel with only one dim overhead bulb, or an Airbnb with no bedside lamp (which has happened to me more than once), a good reading light makes all the difference.
👉 Get a lightweight clip-on reading light here
If you’re like me and sometimes read by the pool or on the beach, I highly recommend a waterproof Kindle case or sleeve. It keeps sand, splashes, and sunscreen smudges away from your Kindle — and gives you peace of mind when reading in hammocks, on ferries, or by the waves.
👉 Find a waterproof Kindle sleeve here
Finally, if you want to save money while reading more, Kindle Unlimited is incredible value. It’s a subscription that gives you access to thousands of books (including some of the books on this list – at least on UK Kindle Unlimited). If you read even 2–3 books a month, it pays for itself.
👉 Try Kindle Unlimited free for 30 days here
And finally — bookmarks! A beautiful bookmark is one of my favourite souvenirs to collect while travelling. They’re small, affordable, and make thoughtful gifts for book-loving friends.
Books about Vietnam: My Personal Recommendations
I’ve visited Vietnam three times: first in 2010, then again in 2024, and most recently in 2025, spending a total of four months travelling and living in this incredibly diverse country. During those trips, some of my best reading discoveries came not from bookstores or online reviews, but from humble book swaps in guesthouses and hostels. I still remember picking up a copy of Dang Thuy Tram’s diary in Hội An that changed the way I thought about the war—not through politics, but through the eyes of an extraordinary woman making enormous sacrifices for her beliefs. I was also thrilled to find found a copy of The Refugees at a thrift shop in Da Nang,
In this post, I’ve curated a selection of powerful novels about Vietnam that go beyond the usual narratives. Whether you’re preparing for your first visit, planning a return trip, or simply hoping to better understand this fascinating country, these books will bring Vietnam’s history and humanity to life in unforgettable ways. The list is in order of my personal preference, but they all have the power to transport you to another time and place.
Looking for books about other Asian countries? Try my guide to books about Southeast Asia, which covers Singapore, Cambodia and others, books about Asia, which covers Nepal and and Sri Lanka, or my list of books about Malaysia or books about China.
If you’re more drawn to books about Europe, check out my guides to books about Albania and books about Bulgaria, with more coming soon!
☕ Reading in a cafe in Vietnam? Check out my guide to Vietnam’s incredible coffee scene to make the most of your cafe experiences!
📘 Dust Child, Nguyen Phan Que Mai
Published: 2023
Summary: Sisters Trang and Quỳnh move to Saigon to get jobs and help their parents pay off their debts. They are soon absorbed into the lives of the women who flirt (and more) with American GIs in bars. They meet Dan, a US soldier, who starts a relationship with Trang. In the present, Dan returns to Vietnam, experiencing PTSD and guilt over his past actions. He links up with Phong, the titular ‘dust child’, a derogatory name for the child of a Black American GI and Vietnamese woman. Phong has never known his parents, and the book follows both Dan and Phong as their stories interconnect.
This is probably my favourite book on this list, and it’s stuck with me for a long time. It highlights an aspect of Vietnamese culture I was unaware of – the stigma around being mixed race. Given how prevalent that must have been after the war, it was really interesting (and sad) to read about the way these children were treated by Vietnamese society.
I also really enjoyed the sections about Dan and his PTSD, and the way he interacted with people while in Vietnam.T It reflects conversations I’ve had with Vietnamese people, including on my amazing Easyrider motorbike trip around Hanoi. In my experience, many Vietnamese people recognize that American soldiers were often unwilling participants in the war and hold no particular animosity towards them.
🧭 Where it takes you: Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the 1960s and 1970s, and present day Vietnam
🏆 Awards: Winner, 2023 She Reads Best Historical Fiction Award; shortlisted, Dayton Literary Peace Prize; shortlisted, Edward Stanford Award for Fiction with a Sense of Place. An Indie Next List Great Read; Best International Novel of the Year by Apple Books Canada; a Best Book of 2023 by Star Tribune
📖 Why read it: To understand the long-term impact of the Vietnam War, on the Vietnamese people who lived through it, the US soldiers who fought in it and the next generation, who had to experience the consequences, especially around being mixed race.
📘 Get Dust Child in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read Dust Child on Kindle → Get it here
📘 The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Published: 2015
Summary: A North Vietnamese spy joins first the South Vietnamese army, before moving into exile in America – all while continuing to spy for the communist government.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel won the Pulitzer Prize, and it shows. This novel is different from anything else on this list – it’s a genre-bending story that combines espionage, politics and history into a thrilling and devastating read. I read it a while ago now, but one thing that sticks out to me is the cloying evocation of war-time Saigon, with the chaos of rapidly unfolding events combining with the drinking culture that had grown during the war.
In complete contrast, I also vividly remember the sections where the protagonist acts as a consultant for a Vietnam War movie in Hollywood, and his attempts to ensure that Vietnamese people are represented fairly by Hollywood. Needless to say, this doesn’t work out well. Finally, the protagonist returns to Vietnam by way of Thailand and Laos, an experience that doesn’t end well, and highlights the brutality of the communist regime.
There is so much in this book that it’s impossible to fully represent it in a short review, but its an incredible story with enormous scope. It is completely different in tone and content to other books on this list, and is a vivid reminder that Vietnam is run by an authoritarian regime.
🧭 Where it takes you:
🏆 Awards: Winner, Pulitzer Prize; Winner, Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best First Novel
📖 Why read it: For a darker spy/thriller novel with significant historical and literary depth, covering the themes of dual heritage and propaganda
📘 Get The Sympathizer in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read The Sympathizer on Kindle → Get it here
📘 The Mountains Sing, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Published: 2020
Summary: This multi-generation story deals with both the 1970s Vietnam War and the Great Hunger period of the 1940s from the point of view of a grandmother and granddaughter. The grandmother, who is middle-class, loses her family land as part of Land Reform. The story follows both characters as they try to survive in Hanoi during the American attacks, and then over the next few years as family members start to return from the war.
I also loved this book by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. It’s similar in scope and style to Dust Child, in that it’s a multi-timeline, traditional novel, although the time periods covered are different in this book. The Mountains Sing is a great way to understand the earlier history of Vietnam, during the 1940s, and the events that led up to communist success in North Vietnam.
It also highlights the impact of the Vietnam War on families in the north, whereas Dust Child is more centred on central and south Vietnam – so reading both is a great way to immerse yourself into the different parts of a very varied country. Finally, I love that this book centred the lives of women in Vietnam – which is often overlooked in a period that focused on fighting and war, which are typically associated with male experiences.
🧭 Where it takes you: throughout north Vietnam from the 1940s onwards, including to Hanoi during the Vietnam War
🏆 Awards: Winner, 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award; Winner, the 2021 International Book Awards; Winner, the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Runner up, 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Received the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship
📖 Why read it: for a multi-generational story of social change and the human impact of successive catastrophes in Vietnam
📘 Get The Mountains Sing in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read The Mountains Sing on Kindle → Get it here
📘 Last night I dreamed of Peace – Dang Thuy Tram
Summary: Dang Thuy Tram was a young woman from Hanoi, serving as a civilian doctor in the Vietnam War and documenting her experiences in her private diaries. When her base was destroyed, the diaries were found by American soldiers, who took the diaries back to American before eventually reaching out to her family to return them.
I picked up this book in one of the beautiful cafes in Hoi An’s rice fields, and read it while in An Bang in Central Vietnam. Reading it there made the diary feel even more powerful, since the author was stationed in central Vietnam, not far south of where I was reading.
I have a lot of conflicting feelings about this book, even months after reading it. The protagonist was clearly an extraordinary young woman – her bravery under fire and selfless treatment of the wounded are what we dream that doctors will be like. I found the insight into her thought patterns about North Vietnam’s communist government fascinating – in many ways, her feelings about society are completely alien to western ideologies. And it was also interesting to see the way she viewed advancement within the Vietnamese Communist Party – it had a slightly frantic tone that hinted at the perils of not being accepted by the party.
That said, these were her private diaries, and much of them are taken up by her thoughts about the young men around her, and her relationships with them. This comes across as self-absorbed and shallow – I frequently had to remind myself that she never intended anyone else to view these private thoughts.
Despite this, I do recommend this book – the immediacy of her account is unique and the foreword, which details how her diary was reunited with her family, gave me an understanding I wouldn’t have gained elsewhere.
🧭 Where it takes you: to Viet Cong outposts in central Vietnam during the war
📖 Why read it: for the unique insights of an extraordinary young woman who lived during the Vietnam War
📘 Get Last Night I Dreamed of Peace in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read Last Night I Dreamed of Peace on Kindle → Get it here
📘 The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Summary: This book contains a series of short stories about people who fled Vietnam as refugees, and their differing experiences in America. The book leads up to stories about refugees and migrants who are returning to Vietnam, and the complex struggles they face.
This second book by the award-winning Viet Thahn Nguyen couldn’t be more different to the powerful and cynical The Sympathizer. Following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the fall of Saigon, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese – including the author and his family – fled the country to escape political persecution, economic hardship, and the new Communist regime.
This is a quiet novel that encourages reflection. The stories aren’t dramatic, but draw on the minutiae of everyday life to highlight the cultural differences between Vietnamese refugees and their new contacts in the USA.
🧭 Where it takes you: to America with the Vietnamese ‘boat people’ who fled in the 1970s, and eventually back to Vietnam
📖 Why read it: For quiet reflection on the experiences of refugees, and the way Vietnam has changed since the 1970s
📘 Get The Refugees in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read The Refugees on Kindle → Get it here
📘 Wandering Souls, Cecile Pin
Published: 2023
Summary: Siblings Anh, Minh and Thanh leave Vietnam ahead of their parents in 1978, hopefully going to a new life in the USA. However, the journey doesn’t go as planned and they end up in a refugee camp in Hong Kong, before being eventually resettled as refugees in the UK.
Wandering Souls explores similar themes to The Refugees but in the form of a full-length novel rather than a short story collection. Following the arcs of the three siblings is an interesting way to understand a range of different refugee experiences, and the author does an incredible job of creating a sense of place in 1980s London (which I dimly recognise from my very early childhood). The sections on being part of the refugee camp in Hong Kong are also fascinating, sad, and timely, given the prevalence of such camps today.
I enjoyed reading this book, but it might be one to deprioritise specifically if you’re travelling to Vietnam, as much of the novel focuses on London.
🧭 Where it takes you: From South Vietnam to London during the 1980s
🏆 Awards: Longlisted, The Women’s Prize for Fiction; [shortlisted, Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize](https://www.waterstones.com/book/wandering-souls/cecile-pin/9780008528812#:~:text=Cecile Pin is a French,Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023.).
📖 Why read it: to understand the experience of the boat people leaving Vietnam in the 1970s, and the experience of being a refugee in the UK.
📘 Get Wandering Souls in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read Wandering Souls on Kindle → Get it here
📘 The Women, Kristen Hannah
Published: 2024
Summary: Frankie, a privileged young American nurse signs up as a Army Medical Nurse to follow her brother to Vietnam and earn a place on her father’s ‘Hero’s Wall’. She is thrown into the deep end when she arrives in Vietnam and has to very quickly learn how to nurse in combat conditions. After her return, she struggles with undiagnosed PTSD and the societal stigma attached to Vietnam veterans—especially women who served.
I was especially curious to read The Women, as it came out while I was in Vietnam, and my book group back in Wiltshire read it at the time. I’ve enjoyed Kristin Hannah’s writing before, and her huge popularity made me hopeful that this novel might bring the stories of women in the Vietnam War to a wider audience.
While the intention—to shed light on female Vietnam veterans—is admirable, I found The Women deeply frustrating. The story convincingly depicts Frankie’s PTSD. As someone who has worked with mental health organisations, I appreciated that aspect of the book. But beyond that, it felt like a novel out of sync with current expectations for historical fiction.
One of Frankie’s closest friends is Barb, a Black nurse. Yet the book doesn’t acknowledges how race might have shaped Barb’s experiences differently—a glaring omission given the well-documented racism in the U.S. military. Barb exists largely to name-drop the Black Panthers, rather than as a fully developed character with her own arc.
Most problematic, though, is the total absence of Vietnamese. Despite being set in Vietnam, the novel contains no developed Vietnamese characters, even though Vietnamese civilians and staff would have been present in the army hospital setting. Instead, we see Frankie and her colleagues presented as white saviours, going out into the local villages to treat Vietnamese people in a very ‘White Saviour’ way. The Vietnamese people are present only as background or patients—not as full human beings.
Finally, the novel only gestures toward uncomfortable truths about American conduct during the war. A single line—“I heard something happened up at My Lai”—is the only reference to what was one of the war’s most horrific atrocities: the massacre of a village by American troops. There’s no deeper reckoning with this or similar events, despite their stated relevance to Frankie’s trauma.
🧭 Where it takes you: To an American army hospital in South Vietnam, and post-war California
🏆 Awards: Goodreads Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction
📖 Why read it: For a compelling narrative about PTSD and the emotional cost of war—for Americans. Not recommended for readers seeking insight into Vietnam or Vietnamese perspectives.
📘 Get The Women in paperback → Get it here
📖 Read The Women on Kindle → Get it here
Frequently asked questions
What is the best novel to read before visiting Vietnam?
It depends on what aspect of Vietnam you’re most interested in. If you’re visiting the north, including Hanoi, The Mountains Sing offers enormous insight into the 20th century history of this area. In contrast, if you’re heading to central or south Vietnam, consider Dust Child, which focuses more on this area.
If you’re interested in the Vietnam War itself, including the politics behind it, The Sympathizer focuses on the actions of the South Vietnam government before the fall of Saigon, while Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a first-hand account of a young Vietnamese woman’s day to day life during the war.
What are some must-visit locations in Vietnam featured in these books?
The Mountains Sing is partly set in Hanoi, which is one of the most popular parts of Vietnam to visit. Both Dust Child and The Sympathizer focus more on Ho Chi Minh City, which is a less popular tourist destination, but still worth visiting.
Many of the books are set in Vietnam’s beautiful countryside, so it’s worth getting away from the cities to see similar areas – for example via a trip through the Hai Van Pass in central Vietnam, or the area around Ninh Binh in the north.
Are these books written by Vietnamese authors?
All these books are written by authors who are either Vietnamese or of Vietnamese heritage. Dang Thuy Tram was a Vietnamese woman from Hanoi who died during the Vietnam War. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is one of Vietnam’s most famous contemporary writers, and has written books in Vietnamese as well as in English. Viet Thanh Nguyen fled Vietnam with his family when he was a child, and grew up in America, while Cecile Pin has a Vietnamese mother.
However, my next read is by Kristen Hannah, an American author. I’m very aware of this as I go into reading the novel, and will address this in my review.
Why is it important to read books by Vietnamese authors?
Reading Vietnamese authors offers essential perspectives that are often missing from Western narratives—especially when it comes to the war, colonialism, and the lives of women. These authors bring cultural nuance and authenticity that can’t be replicated by outside voices.
Are any of these books good for audiobook listeners?
Yes! The Sympathizer and The Mountains Sing both have well-reviewed audiobook versions. Dust Child is also available in audio format and offers a powerful listening experience, especially for travel days or long journeys.
📚 Shop My Vietnam Book List & Travel reading essentials
Here are my top picks , plus the travel reading gear I swear by:
- Dust Child: Paperback | Kindle
- The Sympathizer Paperback | Kindle
- The Mountains Sing Paperback | Kindle
- Last Night I Dreamed of Peace Paperback | Kindle
✨ Travel Reading Essential
- Kindle Paperwhite – my go-to travel reader
- Clip on book light – perfect for hostels & night buses
- Waterproof Kindle Cover – essential for beaches & pools
💡 Pro Tip: Some of these titles may be included in Kindle Unlimited. Availability varies by country, so it’s worth checking if you already subscribe — or you can try Kindle Unlimited free for 30 days here.
I hope these novels help you see Vietnam in a deeper, more human way—just as they did for me during my travels. Whether you’re heading there soon or exploring from home, these stories offer a powerful lens into the lives, histories, and resilience of the Vietnamese people. If you have a favourite book about Vietnam—or discover one during your trip—I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Planning a Trip to Vietnam?
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If you’re still in the inspiration or early planning phase, you can also download my free Culture-First Traveller’s Guide to Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia — a thoughtful introduction to travelling Southeast Asia with context, care, and curiosity.
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And if you’d prefer someone to build a personalised itinerary just for you — tailored to your time, interests, pace, and travel style — I also offer custom trip planning.
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Emma is a travel writer and lifelong book lover who reads over 100 books a year—many of them while on the road. She has visited Vietnam three times, spending four months exploring the country between 2024 and 2025. Her blog combines a passion for immersive fiction with real-world travel, helping readers see destinations through both stories and lived experience.
✅ All photos featured on this blog are from my personal travel experiences. No stock images are used.
Thanks for the book recommendations! Definitely adding Last Night I Dreamed of Peace to my reading list.
It’s an extremely unique book! I hope you enjoy it.
I never read books by Vietnamese authors, and this is a good place to start! Thank you for sharing!
No problem, I hope you get to read some of them!
I was quite enthralled by this article because I wanted to read about Vietnam before I visited. I read the Women and liked it, but I would agree that it lacked the Vietnamese side of things. Thanks for the detailed reviews.
It does a great job around mental health and PTSD and the role of women in the military, which are all important subjects. But as a book to learn about Vietnam, it doesn’t hit the mark at all unfortunately.
I haven’t read that many Vietnamese novels in recent years, but I am drawn to The Sympathizer – I’ll be adding this to my reading list.
It’s an incredible, powerful novel that is an absolute rollercoaster. I hope you enjoy it!
This is such a great way to get a real feeling of a country or area before you travel there. You’re recommendations totally sound like my cup of tea – so thank you for this! <3
No problem, I hope you enjoy some of them!