40 Men and 12 Rifles: Indochina 1954

By the author of Such a Lovely Little War and Saigon Calling, a stirring graphic novel about love, beauty, and war in 1950s Indochina.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is an expansive, gripping graphic novel set in Indochina in the year leading up to 1954, when the French-held garrison at Dien Bien Phu fell after a fifty-five-day battle, which lead to the end of the first Indochina war opposing both French and Nationalist Vietnamese forces to Ho Chi Minh's National-Communist underground state. Minh (no relation to Ho) is a young man from Hanoi, an aspiring painter who dreams of experiencing la vie de boheme in Paris's Latin Quarter. To dissuade him from pursuing an artistic life, his father sends him into the countryside to tend to the family holdings. He is soon pressed into serving with the Ho Chi Minh People's Army, where he becomes a soldier, and is co-opted by his leaders to the Communist propaganda machine, despite repeatedly defying his cadres--ideological Communist commanders with whom he disagrees-- becoming both hero and anti-hero in the process.

40 Men and 12 Rifles is a moving and beautifully illustrated book about the human and artistic spirit of the Indochinese people, who persevered in the face of warfare and suffering.

Author: Marcelino Truong
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Published: 10/03/2023
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 9.37h x 7.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781551529233

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 10/30/2023

About the Author
Marcelino Truong is a French Vietnamese painter, illustrator, and author whose previous books include Such a Lovely Little War: Saigon 1961-63 and Saigon Calling: London 1963-75. Born in 1957, the son of a Vietnamese diplomat in the Philippines, he and his family moved to the US and then to Vietnam at the outset of the war. He attended the French Lycée in London, then moved to Paris, where he earned degrees in law at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and in English literature at the Sorbonne. He lives in St-Malo, France. David Homel is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and translator, and the author of nine novels. He has translated many French-language books into English and is a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. He lives in Montreal.