An actual newsletter

Breaking my promise that this would be a news-free newsletter to send out a quick update. Please forgive the interruption.

It’s Sunday, so I think you should go for a walk in a park, eat an ice cream and read a book.

1 – One Day at the Saigon Zoo

Delighted that the Shanghai Literary Review has published my essay on the Saigon Zoo and Botanical gardens. I’m awful at writing my own blurb, so thankfully they’ve summed the essay up much better than I could have done.

Connla Stokes reflects on the zoo’s complex history, from colonial-era elegance and wartime concerts to family-friendly park. Despite recent challenges, the zoo endures as a vital green refuge and living testament to the city’s layered past—a reminder of the delicate balance between heritage, nature, and urban development in Vietnam’s largest metropolis.

Some of you might have read an earlier version of the essay but it has been expanded (and finessed) and looks right at home on the SLR website.

2 – The Life and Times of Madame Canon

I had a lot of fun researching and writing this story. If you haven’t read it, it’s still up on Substack. Here’s my attempt at a blurb:

Born and raised in Vietnam, Marie-Madeleine O’Connell was a French (no, not Irish) plantation owner in Cochinchina – southern Vietnam today – but please don’t picture Catherine Deneuve looking immaculate in the tropics. O’Connell was tough, hard-working, fluent in Vietnamese, and truly revered by the local workers who toiled on her land.

By the 1940s, she was also reportedly armed to the teeth – protecting her estate from anti-colonial forces, revolutionaries and other armed entities – and in March 1947, she apparently hid and transported so much artillery for the beleaguered French army that she earned the nickname ‘Madame Canon’ and was considered by the Viet Minh to be more more formidable than any French general. But to understand who Madeleine O’Connell really was, perhaps we must also understand the times she lived in… mixing historical fact with fiction, this essay attempts to make sense of a tumultuous period of history.

3 - Desperately seeking ‘Falling for Saigon’

“Some cities capture your curiosity. Others steal your heart.”

As most of you most probably know, my book, which is a collection of essays about life in contemporary Ho Chi Minh City, has been out since May 1. I got a pretty good review here in the LA Review of Books: An Irishman’s Love Letter to Saigon.

To answer my one and only FAQ: Where can I get your book? Any bookshop (outside of Vietnam) will happily order it for you, and you can also order via a bookstore’s online platform (if they have one) – or even yer man Bezos’ site. For anyone who has found a copy in the wild, please let me know where – or send me a pic of the book in the wild. Apologies to folk in Vietnam who would like to purchase it but can’t get it. Obviously I’ll spread the word if that changes, and I'll let you all know when I get the ‘Falling for Saigon’ branded totes, coffee mugs, caps and t-shirts printed. That’s where the real money is, right?