Phu Rieng was one of many French rubber plantations in colonial Vietnam; Tran Tu Binh was one of 17,606 laborers brought to work there in 1927, and his memoir is a straightforward, emotionally searing account of how one Vietnamese youth became involved in revolutionary politics. The connection between this early experience and later activities of the author becomes clear as we learn that Tran Tu Binh survived imprisonment on Con Son island to help engineer the general uprising in Hanoi in 1945.

The Red Earth is the first of dozens of such works by veterans of the 1924–45 struggle in Vietnam to be published in English translation. It is important reading for all those interested in the many-faceted history of modern Vietnam and of communism in the non-Western world.

Tran Tu Binh (1907–1967) was a young revolutionary who rose to the rank of general in the army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and later filled the important post of ambassador to People’s Republic of China.

David G. Marr is an emeritus professor and visiting fellow at the Australian National University as well as author of Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power, and Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945.