Books by Pham Thi Hoai
“It’s a graceful novel. It’s beautifully written as a stream of consciousness. It’s not about the war and there are very few novels in translation of that period that aren’t. The novel portrays a traumatized post-war Hanoi. At the end of the war in 1975, after the reunification of North and South Vietnam, the economy had totally collapsed. They had nothing. Again, it’s bleak. It’s the story of a young woman coming of age. Her family are communist cadres and she’s a free spirit, an outsider who doesn’t accept the social mores of the time, the strictness of socialism. She describes Hanoi as a city full of faceless humans, fear and denunciations.” Read more...
Sherry Buchanan, Journalist
Interviews where books by Pham Thi Hoai were recommended
The Best Vietnamese Novels, recommended by Sherry Buchanan
Vietnam has had a tumultuous history and its literature is one powerful way of trying to understand it better. Journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan—who has spent two decades introducing Vietnam’s culture to English-speaking audiences—talks us through the best Vietnamese novels available in English, spanning the years from French colonialism to the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.
