In Pharaoh's Army: Reflections on a Forgotten Conflict

Matt: Great book

Canada on Oct 21, 2017

Jack Stuart: Wow. What a writer. He pulls me in as he describes his time in Vietnam. He paints the absurdity of the war and his somewhat but not completely reluctant part in it with a dry kindness, not shirking or dwelling on the brutal. Most of the story is told against the writer, he has a humility and a voice which makes me want to read him more.

United Kingdom on Apr 19, 2017

りんご: A Gripping Account of An American in Vietnam: From the most mundane moment to intense encounters, Tobias Wolff shares his days and nights in Vietnam with those of us who will never otherwise be there at that time. His journey illuminates the murky progression from patriotic enlistment to disenchanted honorable discharge--he's not the same young man by the end of his service. Highly personal and yet it has the ring of genuinely shared experience. No slogans, no preaching, no soap-boxing... He tells us what it was like for him and invites us to draw our own conclusions. Having read both This Boy's Life and In Pharaoh's Army, I'm ready to agree that this writer is one of the best we have. --Curious side-note: The book I got (used paperback, early edition) has "Memories of a Lost War," but later editions are phrased "Memories of the Lost War."

Japan on Sep 12, 2015

Mary O. Raith: I enjoyed reading In Pharaoh’s Army by Tobias Wolff. The reason why I picked it was because I wanted to see how his life progressed and how he matured. Also, the plot was very intriguing, as I love learning about the Vietnam War. One of the things that I really liked about the book was the fact that he jumps around from scene to scene, instead of going chronologically. There are many examples of this, but, as I mentioned in my quick talk, the passage I chose takes place when he is getting ready to go to Vietnam, and earlier in the book he has a chapter about close calls when he almost died in the war. Jumping around and not going chronologically causes the reader to focus more on the overarching themes and his reflection on events, which I really liked. It was also really interesting to see some of the main themes from This Boy’s Life continued in this book. Wolff’s feeling of abandonment is something I noticed in both books.
Another thing I loved about this book was the fact that Tobias Wolff makes the book very interesting by using writing techniques like final images, short syntax, and descriptive language to make the book more enjoyable to the reader. Wolff uses these...

United States on Dec 17, 2013

Shankar Mony: Tobias Wolff may have lived a lie when was growing up, faking transcripts to get into schools and what not, but in his writing there is no lie. To read it is to feel almost cleansed.

India on Nov 03, 2013

Earl R. Anderson: From the 1980s to the present, dozens of Vietnam War veterans have written memoirs about their experiences. From the point of view of composition, these fall into three groups. (1) Some of them were composed with the aid of ghost-writers or heavy-handed editors; usually they suffer from the professional touch of a third-party author who assimilates the terrors of the Vietnam War to an adventure-novel. What could have been an authentic witness to war is turned into inauthentic fiction.
(2) Some were composed by inexperienced authors who struggled on their own. These books are more authentic than adventure-memoirs, but at times they are difficult to read because they are driven by chronology, and present as a string of episodes ungoverned by thematic purpose. (3) In a third group, some memoirs have both the authenticity of veteran, and the professional touch of an experienced writer. Tobias Wolff's "In Pharaoh's Army" is one of these. Another, much earlier, is Tim O'Brien's "If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Send Me Home." Wolff's memoir follows chronology, but events are grouped in chapters that develop provocative themes.

For me, two features of "In Pharaoh's...

United States on Dec 01, 2012

R. A. Jinkinson: Tobias Wolff writes well and has an eye for detail that illuminates the past. This memoir covers his early adult years, the relationship with his father and his part in the American incursion in Vietnam. With delicacy and humor Wolff describes the perplexity of a young man in a war in a very foreign country and his confusion on returning home. His errant father appears once again; a lovable, irascible, charming liar, but still a father. A good book, easy to read, well written with depth.

United Kingdom on Nov 08, 2010

D. F SHAFER: There are those of us males who were on the leading edge of the baby-boomers - born in the late 1940s - for whom Viet Nam was an experience that forged our futures. After almost 40 years it is good to look back and try to make sense about what happen to ourselves - individually and collectively. Along with Michael Herr's "Dispatches", Tobias Wolff's "In Pharaoh's Army" captures the feeling of those of us who served. on the ground, in Southeast Asia and came home with no physical - and I must admit - very few psychological effects.

Wolff captures the phenomenal sangfroid that Americans exhibited during that 95% of the time they were not being attacked - the other 5% was stark terror! Our inability to understand the Vietnamese culture or the war as it was being prosecuted by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong is starkly portrayed. No better scene has been written that the "sighting" of taller than normal, Vietnamese strangers in the village bar drinking beer before January 31, 1968. The Americans recognized these men as not villagers but did nothing about it. They were North Vietnamese regular soldiers in civilian clothes infiltrating the American "secure hamlets" in...

United States on May 27, 2005