AustLit

'Frank Stevens is one of the first Australian soldiers in and the last out of the Vietnam War. He has been sent to train hill tribes during the conflict, and Seeing the Elephant (an informal expression for experiencing combat for the first time) follows his lifelong friendship with his translator, Minh. Told through Frank's wartime letters home and a dying Minh's recollections many decades later in Perth, the novel doesn't skimp on the brutality, confusion and psychological cost of the war, nor on the poignancy of an unlikely bond forged in the midst of trauma. ...'