Chinatown

Synopsis

While waiting beside an abandoned package in the Paris Métro that may be a bomb, a Vietnamese woman begins to retrace the path of her life. Her memories move between communist Hanoi, student life in Leningrad during the final years of the Soviet Union, and the suburbs of Paris, where she now lives with her young son. Running through them all is her enduring love for Thuy, a writer she has not seen in more than a decade.

Told as a mesmerizing interior monologue, Chinatown is a novel of memory, exile, longing, and political history. Through dreams, recollection, and shifting landscapes, Thuận explores the lasting effects of war, migration, and separation with extraordinary emotional precision. Winner of the 2023 National Translation Award in Prose, this remarkable novel is translated from the Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý.

About the Author

Thuận is one of Vietnam's most celebrated contemporary novelists. Living in Paris, she has written extensively about displacement, memory, and the Vietnamese diaspora. Her formally inventive fiction has earned international acclaim and introduced English-language readers to one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Vietnamese literature.

Publisher
New Directions

Publication Date
March 5, 2024

Format
Paperback

Pages
160

Subjects
Literary Fiction · Translated Fiction · Vietnamese Literature · Contemporary Fiction

ISBN
9780811231886