The Lotus Eaters

If, like me, Vietnam is a country that fascinates you, Tatjana Soli's debut novel cannot fail to entice you in. This Austrian-born Californian writer has entwined a story about love, ambition and loss around the period in history that sits like a scar on the country's beautiful landscape: the Vietnam War.

American Helen is a naive wannabe photojournalist when she arrives in the land that claimed the life of her soldier brother. She enters a man's world, and falls for one particular man who makes no concessions. A veteran war photographer, Sam Darrow's ambition has put him much further along the emotional journey that Helen is about to embark on. His experience of the Vietnam War is shackled to that of his assistant Linh, a Vietnamese former soldier who is to become as important to Helen as he is to Darrow.

Soli's exploration of the entangled relationships between the three is set against a detailed portrait of war and the photojournalist's role in it. Soon Helen faces the emotionally draining dilemma of her fellow professionals: horrified by the reality of war yet propelled by ambition to exploit that horror to take an award-winning photo. She journeys from one extreme to another until finally her profession becomes a drug that pushes her a step too far.

At times Soli's American style of prose seems a touch obtuse, but as the story develops this becomes a novel that draws you in and stays with you longer than the emotional last page.