Joseph Andras's 'Faraway the Southern Sky' explores Hồ Chí Minh's Paris years through surveillance reports

Joseph Andras's book 'Faraway the Southern Sky' investigates the period when Hồ Chí Minh lived in Paris under various aliases, including Nguyên Ai Quôc, before becoming Vietnam's prime minister. The work blends speculative fiction, biography, and psychogeography, drawing on police surveillance records to trace locations linked to the revolutionary. Translated by Simon Leser and published by Verso, it retails for £9.99 in softcover. Andras describes the text as a 'geography of events, topology of facts,' examining how Paris conceals and reveals histories. The narrative also references other rebels and exiles, such as forty-eighters and gilets jaunes, who avoided institutionalization. Hồ Chí Minh reportedly used between 50 and 200 pseudonyms throughout his life due to surveillance. The book includes poetic phrases like 'the sky is like a sea the wind forgot' and critiques European disinterest in Indochina. It functions as an act of resistance against historical erasure, exploring the stories of those operating outside mainstream narratives.