Norfolk writer and former EDP journalist Anthony Grey is celebrating the publication of the 30th anniversary edition of his international bestseller Saigon and the 25th anniversary edition of his novel Peking at The Holt Bookshop on Saturday, November 23, from 11am to 1pm.
Mr Grey will be signing copies of Saigon and Peking, along with his new volume of short stories and poems, Resurrection in Guatemala. Mr Grey’s books are published by Norwich-based The Tagman Press, www.tagmanpress.com.
A bestseller in nine languages and 15 countries, Saigon has been paid the compliment of being continually pirated in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, for three decades. And it was the first-ever Thai language book about Vietnam published in Thailand, pirated in two volumes by the Prime Minister’s son.
As critics predicted when it was first published in 1983, Saigon has stood the test of time. It was adopted soon after publication simultaneously as a course book for cadets at the US Navy Academy in Annapolis, the Peoples Defense University in Hanoi and Dartmouth Naval College in the UK. Thirty years later it is providing a new generation of readers worldwide with insights into the Vietnam War, which later produced such tragic echoes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Saigon is republished alongside a 25th anniversary edition of Peking, Anthony Grey’s epic novel of China’s twentieth century revolution.
What the critics said about Saigon:
“This superb novel could well be the War and Peace of our age.” San Francisco Chronicle.
‘The ringing irony of Saigon is that a major work of fiction was required to adequately explain the fundamental tragedy of the United States involvement in Vietnam …This is a novel of terrible importance.’ Kansas City Star
‘An absorbing saga, an epic novel… Anthony Grey is not just a man of steely courage as his survival of two years as a hostage in Peking demonstrated; he is one of that rare species – a born storyteller.’ The Daily Mail
‘This books makes a claim as the Vietnam equivalent to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead written about the Second World War.’ Nashville Banner
What the critics said about Peking:
‘A magnificent epic novel on modern China. The book is worth reading solely as a factual reminder of the chaos and calamity of China as a quarter of the world’s people struggled and suffered towards modernity in the stormy and cruel decades between 1920 and 1980.’ The Toronto Star, Canada
‘Anthony Grey’s gripping fiction, based on meticulously attributed sources, is part epic, part blockbuster … A moving chronicle, profoundly sincere theme.’ The Times
‘An excellent read, panoramic in scope and often powerful in effect … Fascinating stuff: but what lingers on is the teller of the tale, the voice behind it.’ Financial Times
Anthony Grey
In the 1960s, Anthony Grey was a foreign correspondent with Reuters, having begun his career in journalism in the UK with the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk where he was born and educated. He covered the Cold War from datelines all across Eastern Europe before being assigned to China.
He was the only British journalist resident in the Chinese capital at the height of the Cultural Revolution, and became the focus of worldwide headlines for two years when he was seized as a hostage by Mao Tse-tungs’s Red Guards and held in solitary confinement. After publishing his first international bestselling book Hostage in Peking, a non-fiction account of his ordeal, he established himself as a radio and television presenter, novelist, independent publisher and frequent public speaker.
