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A DANGEROUS FRIEND

A DANGEROUS FRIEND Hardcover - 1999

by Ward S. Just

  • Used
  • Hardcover
  • first

Description

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1999. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 0395856981 . Fine in a Near Fine dust jacket. ; 9.1 X 6.6 X 1.1 inches; 256 pages .
Used: See description
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Details

  • Title A DANGEROUS FRIEND
  • Author Ward S. Just
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Edition First Edition; First Printing
  • Pages 272
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston
  • Date 1999
  • Bookseller's Inventory # 149606
  • ISBN 9780395856987 / 0395856981
  • Weight 1.1 lbs (0.50 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.31 x 6.31 x 1.01 in (23.65 x 16.03 x 2.57 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Psychological fiction, Adventure stories
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 98-50728
  • Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Summary

In this, his twelfth novel, Ward Just penetrates more deeply into America's role in the world than he has ever done before. This beautifully constructed large-canvas novel of Saigon in 1965 can be justly compared to Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO or Graham Greene's THE QUIET AMERICAN. A DANGEROUS FRIEND is a thrilling narrative roiling with intrigue, mayhem, and betrayal. Here is the story of conscience and its consequences among those for whom Vietnam was neither the right fight nor the wrong fight but the only fight. The exotic tropical surroundings, the coarsening and corrupting effects of a colonial regime, the visionary delusions of the American democratizers, all play their part. In A DANGEROUS FRIEND, a few civilians with bright minds and sunny intentions want to reform Vietnam -- but the Vietnam they see isn't the Vietnam that is. Sydney Parade, a political scientist, has left home and family in an effort to become part of something larger than himself, a foreign-aid operation in Saigon. Even before he arrives, he encounters French and Americans who reveal to him the unsettling depths of a conflict he thought he understood -- and in Saigon, the Vietnamese add yet another dimension. Before long, the rampant missteps and misplaced ideals trap Parade and others in a moral crossfire.

From the publisher

Ward Just is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the National book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award. In a career that began as a war correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Just has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including Britain, France, and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as politicians, civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the tension between public duty and private conscience that animates much of his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just and his wife, Sarah Catchpole, divide their time between Martha’s Vineyard and Paris.

Media reviews

"Novelist Ward Just is adept at getting under the skin of recent history and under the protectively colored language of national dogma." Boston Globe

"Extraordinary...Mr. Just's novel makes you want to run screaming into the street to protest retrospectively the war he has so movingly recreated." The New York Times

"A powerful story beautifully told." Newsweek

"Perhaps this book will garner Just the popularity he deserves. Its greatness will stand the test of time. Conrad and Melville remain contemporary writers a century after their books were published. One hundred years hence, A Dangerous Friend will remain a beautiful, beautiful book." The San Francisco Chronicle

"Emotionally wrenching and always beautifully observant, this is a work in the Graham Greene tradition." Entertainment Weekly

About the author

Ward Just is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the National book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Award. In a career that began as a war correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Just has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including Britain, France, and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as politicians, civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the tension between public duty and private conscience that animates much of his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just and his wife, Sarah Catchpole, divide their time between Martha's Vineyard and Paris.

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