Chronicles of a Village (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780300276404)

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 neighbors--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 eternalizes 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."

Author: Nguyen Thanh Hien
ISBN-10: 0300276400
ISBN-13: 9780300276404
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/02/2024
Pages: 144
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.43h x 5.43w x 0.47d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2024