Dear René and Fenger: With permission, I dedicate this book to you.Not just to commemorate all the fun evenings I've spent with you in Saigon over the past five years, but also because I've taken it upon myself to borrow the address of your apartment for a character in my book, and yours Name, Feng Er.This is for the convenience of readers, because this name is simple, beautiful, and easy to pronounce, and not all of your female compatriots have such names.You two will see that I have borrowed nothing beyond that, certainly not from anyone in Vietnam.Pyle, Granger, Fowler, Vigot, Joe—these characters were nonexistent in the real-life Saigon Va Hanoi, and General Tay was long dead: he was, it was said, carried away while escaping. He was shot and killed.Even at least one of those historical events was rearranged by me.For example, the big bomb explosion near the Continental Hotel occurred before the bicycle bombing, not after it.For these small changes, I have no scruples.This is fiction, not history.I hope that as a novel about a few fictional characters, it can beat a sweltering Saigon evening for both of you.

your close friends Graham Green I don't like to feel: for the will is excited, and action is the most dangerous thing, and I tremble at an artificial thing, a sentimental, mishandled thing, which, with our terrible sense of duty, we are most apt to do. out of this kind of thing. — Hugh Clough This is the age of patents for new inventions--all new inventions that kill the body and save the soul are all described as having the best intentions. —Byron