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Chronicles of a Village
Brief Description
An incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in Vietnam. "The book bursts with characters, poetry, philosophy, romance, violence, and struggle. . . . A dreamlike, original, strangely hopeful book."—Kirkus Reviews At the foot of Mun Mountain in central Vietnam,...
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See moreAn incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in Vietnam
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Description
An incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in Vietnam.
"The book bursts with characters, poetry, philosophy, romance, violence, and struggle. . . . A dreamlike, original, strangely hopeful book."—Kirkus Reviews
At the foot of Mun Mountain in central Vietnam, a self-appointed scribe collects the stories of his neighbours—tales of love, nature, and war—and weaves them into a surrealist history of their farming community. In crystalline fragments resembling prose poems, the scribe eternalises the vanishing beauty and tragic transformation of the village—its sacred forests, astonishing animals, mythical figures, and human lives nurtured by a profound love for soil and sky, as well as its catastrophes: ecological destruction, political purges, asphyxiating modernity, violence, and indoctrination in the name of progress.
Nguyễn Thanh Hiện’s Chronicles of a Village, the writer’s first work to be translated into English, is an elegy for a place and a people; a profound meditation on how history is created, destroyed, manipulated, and rewritten; and a tribute to the beauty and "fatal historical disabilities of a land."
Series: The Margellos World Republic of Letters
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Chronicles of a Village
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Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780300276404
Publisher: Yale University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 14 May 2024
Country: United States
Imprint: Yale University Press
Contributors:
- Translated by Quyen Nguyen-Hoang
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 140.0mm
Height: 216.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 144
About the Author
Nguyễn Thanh Hiện (b. 1940), one of the most important writers in Vietnam, is the author of numerous novels, poems, and short stories. Chronicles of a Village is his first work to be translated into English. He lives in Qui Nhơn, Vietnam. Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng is a widely published writer, translator, and art curator, and is winner of a Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation. She lives in Saigon, Vietnam.
Also by Nguyen Thanh Hien
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Chronicles of A Village
A fragmentary poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies and histories of a tabulated village in modern-day Vietnam. Chronicles of a Village is set in an anonymous Vietnamese village based on the author's personal memories. The surrealistic narrative touches on the country's pre-modern history, the colonial era, and the onslaught of modernity that irreversibly affects the mountains, rivers, soil and...Paperback$2700Elsewhere:$3000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
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