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.

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.