Read very rapidly on the road from Hồ Chí Minh City to Hà Nội. Anyone interested in post-đổi mới-Việt Nam should read this book. While the prose is not uniformly excellent, by-and-large it is, and the stories are masterfully woven even when some go unconcluded. It is the most insightful book I've yet read about this country, and the lives of those who stayed and those who left.