100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock 🇳🇿

Fast Overnight NZ-wide Delivery 🚀

Chronicles of a Village

By Nguyen Thanh Hien
Series: The Margellos World Republic of Letters
0.0 (0 reviews)
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,... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3599
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 3-4 weeks

Found a better price? Request a price match

An incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in Vietnam

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! 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

View all
  • Ballerina
    A critically acclaimed #1 bestseller in France—a novel of art, desire, and time lost and regained, from Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano. "Pithy and introspective. . . . Modiano delivers wondrous images of the tricks memory plays, sharply translated by Polizzotti. . . . Readers will savour this wistful narrative."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Paris, 1960s. A young dancer and single...
    By Patrick Modiano
    Paperback
    $3599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Look at the Lights, My Love
    A meditation on the big-box superstore, from 2022 Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux For half a century, French writer Annie Ernaux has restlessly explored stories and subjects often considered unworthy of artistic reflection. In this exquisite meditation, Ernaux turns her attention to the phenomenon of the big-box superstore, a ubiquitous feature of modern life that has received scant attention in literature....
    By Annie Ernaux
    Paperback
    $3099
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • A Sensitive Person
    A Sensitive Person is a brutally funny, carnivalesque novel about love, death, and survival, from the Czech Republic’s greatest living author. Tab, an itinerant Czech actor, travels around Europe on the theatre circuit with his partner, Sońa, and their two young sons, attending festivals and performing plays. Confronted with growing resentment toward foreigners, Tab decides to return home to the...
    By Jachym Topol
    Paperback
    $4799
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Barefoot Doctor
    Barefoot Doctor is a profound, poignant story of a village healer and her community, crafted by one of the world’s great contemporary novelists. A complex and illuminating portrait of a group of healers in China . . . [that] offers profound insights about what it means to pursue and live a fulfilling life.” — Publishers Weekly A barefoot doctor herself,...
    By Can Xue
    Paperback
    $2899
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • By the Rivers of Babylon
    A profound and genre-defying work of literature about love, death, and illness from one of Portugal’s most celebrated writers Incapacitated after the removal of a malignant tumour, the narrator, António, spends his days in a Lisbon hospital enduring the humiliations of severe illness. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he revisits fragments of his life and the people...
    By Antonio Lobo Antunes
    Hardback
    $3899
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Chronicles of a Village
    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...
    By Nguyen Thanh Hien
    Paperback
    $3599
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Five Spice Street
    The first full-length novel by Chinese author Can Xue to appear in English Five Spice Street tells the story of a street in an unnamed city whose inhabitants speculate on the life of a mysterious Madam X. The novel interweaves their endless suppositions into a work that is at once political parable and surreal fantasia. Some think X is 50...
    By Can Xue
    Paperback
    $7199
    Available
    Ships in 2-3 weeks
  • Graveyard Clay
    A brilliant new translation of Ó Cadhain’s modern Irish literature masterpiece, meant to spark debate and comparison with Alan Titley's Dirty Dust, now with bonus materials on its history, reception, interpretations, adaptations, and more. "Gloriously attuned to the energy, copiousness, invective and ribaldry of the original Cre na Cille." — Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement "Corrosively satirical and darkly comic....
    By Mairtin O Cadhain
    Paperback
    $3099
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • I Live in the Slums
    Longlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize A major new collection of stories by one of the most exciting and creative voices in contemporary Chinese literature. I Live in the Slums by Can Xue observes no obvious conventions of plot or characterisation. That is the only rule it follows. Instead, it tends to limn a disordered and poetic state, given...
    By Can Xue
    Hardback
    $5399
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Invisible Ink
    Patrick Modiano explores the boundaries of recollection in a "mesmerizing, enigmatic novel" (Publishers Weekly). "A mesmerizing, enigmatic novel... A story about growing old and the gaps and omissions that make up a life... Its dreamlike prose and a beguiling structural twist make it a worthy and satisfying addition to [Modiano’s] accomplished oeuvre." — Publishers Weekly "Nobel Prize winner Modiano’s title...
    By Patrick Modiano
    Paperback
    $3299
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Love in the New Millennium
    Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019 The most ambitious work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest writers "In this dreamlike novel . . . amid increasingly bizarre scenarios, appearances give way to hidden, otherworldly layers."New Yorker In this darkly comic novel, a group of women inhabits a world of constant surveillance, where informants lurk in the...
    By Can Xue
    Paperback
    $2899
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
  • Masters and Servants
    One of Pierre Michon's most powerful works, this book imagines decisive moments in the lives of five artists of different times and places: Vincent van Gogh, Francisco Goya, Antoine Watteau, Claude Lorrain, and Lorentino, a little-remembered disciple of Piero della Francesca. Michon focuses on particular moments when artist and model collide, whether that model is a person or a landscape,...
    By Pierre Michon
    Paperback
    $6499
    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks

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

Collections

Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Nguyen Thanh Hien Series: The Margellos World Republic of Letters

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

View all
  • 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...
    By Nguyen Thanh Hien
    Paperback
    $2700
    Elsewhere:
    $3000
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks

More from General Fiction

View all
  • The Wedding People
    'BEST READ OF THE YEAR SO FAR' THE TIMES 'BOOKS AS FUN AS THIS ONE ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN' GUARDIAN Phoebe Stone arrives at a grand beachside hotel in Rhode Island wearing her best dress and least comfortable shoes. Immediately she is mistaken for one of the wedding people — but she's actually the only guest at the Cornwall...
    By Alison Espach
    Paperback
    $2399
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    (3)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    Dungeon Crawler Carl
    The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman-now with bonus material exclusive to the print edition! You know what's worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what's worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction...
    By Matt Dinniman
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Pre-order
    Big Little Truths
    Parenting teens is not for the faint of heart but Madeline, Jane and Celeste have been through worse. It's been a decade since the school trivia night that changed their lives forever and now they're living blissfully ordinary suburban lives. But when an anonymous grisly package arrives at the local high school, and a man in a green Volvo is...
    By Liane Moriarty
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Pre-order
    Out 25 Aug 2026
  • On Sale
    17% off
    Dylan's Pick Dylan's Pick
    Theo of Golden
    THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING PHENOMENON'For anything to be truly good, there must be love in it. Nothing is what it's supposed to be if love is not at the core.' One morning, a stranger arrives in the town of Golden. No one knows who he is or where he came from…His name is Theo and he's arrived there by chance –...
    By Allen Levi
    Paperback
    $2400
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Throne of Glass Box Set (Paperback)
    Enter the realm. Unleash the darkness. Live the legend. Discover the worldwide phenomenon of the #1 New York Times-bestselling Throne of Glass series in this gorgeous 8-book box set! In a land without magic, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She has no love for the vicious king who rules from his throne of glass, but she has not...
    By Sarah J. Maas
    Set
    $12400
    Elsewhere:
    $15500
    (6)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    The Ballad of Falling Dragons [Special Deluxe edition]
    The No.1 Sunday Times bestselling sensation When the Moon Hatched continues with the second book in The Moonfall Series, The Ballad of Falling Dragons… Raeve’s thirst for vengeance continues to burn, as does her love for Kaan Vaegor – a staunch beacon from a past she’s yet to face. With Rekk’s blood still fresh on her hands, she learns the...
    By Sarah A. Parker
    Hardback
    $5999
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Goal
    Welcome to Briar U!Get ready for your newest obsession . . . Discover the addictive world of the Off-Campus series from The Queen of Hockey Romance, Elle Kennedy!Read The Goal now for the perfect forced proximity romance! She's good at achieving her goals . . . College senior Sabrina James has her whole future planned out: graduate from college, kick...
    By Elle Kennedy
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    On Sale
    17% off
    Project Hail Mary
    Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, the SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of The Martian, offers a gripping new adventure in hard science fiction. With endorsement from notable figures such as Barack Obama and a slew of five-star reviews, this novel promises a thrilling and intellectually stimulating journey. Ryland Grace, a lone astronaut, finds himself on a...
    By Andy Weir
    Paperback
    $2000
    Elsewhere:
    $2400
    (5)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    Carl's Doomsday Scenario
    Join Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat Princess Donut as they fight fantastical creatures and deadly mobs in the second book in the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl series -now with bonus material exclusive to the print edition Now on the third floor, Carl and Donut have to fight harder than ever. They've already proven that a Coast Guard vet and once-and-forever...
    By Matt Dinniman
    Hardback
    $4699
    Elsewhere:
    $6000
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • Buy to Win
    East of Eden
    Set against the backdrop of the fertile Salinas Valley in California, East of Eden is a profound and compelling novel by John Steinbeck, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. This masterful narrative charts the intertwining destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—across multiple generations. Steinbeck's intricate portrayal of human nature and enduring exploration of moral themes...
    By John Steinbeck
    Paperback
    $2499
    Elsewhere:
    $2600
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • New Release
    On Mystic Lake
    One of the greatest storytellers of our time - Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing Annie Colwater's only child has just left home for school in England. On that same day, her husband of twenty years confesses that he's in love with a younger woman. Left alone in the beautiful California house which was once a home, Annie...
    By Kristin Hannah
    Paperback
    $3100
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships today
  • The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings Boxed Set
    Embark on a journey through Middle-earth with J.R.R. Tolkien's timeless masterpieces, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. These enthralling tales recount the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, a modest hobbit whose life is turned upside down when he unwittingly becomes entwined in a perilous quest involving dragons, wizards, and the fate of the world. Alongside iconic characters such as...
    By J. R. R. Tolkien
    Box Set
    $7199
    Elsewhere:
    $8999
    In Stock
    Ships today

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.

General Fiction lists from the team

Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!

The Latest at Book Hero

View all