Blogs in May 2020

Dumb Luck 18th May 2020

Banned in Vietnam until 1986, Dumb Luck–by the controversial and influential Vietnamese writer Vu Trong Phung–is a bitter satire of the rage for modernization in Vietnam during the late colonial era. First published in Hanoi during 1936, it follows...

Read More 

The Infatuations 18th May 2020

Every day, Maria Dolz stops for breakfast at the same café. And every day she enjoys watching a handsome couple who follow the same routine. Then one day they aren’t there, and she feels obscurely bereft. It is only...

Read More 

Fresh Water for Flowers 18th May 2020

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Random visitors, regulars, and her colleagues―three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest―visit her to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter, companionship, and occasional tears...

Read More 

Memories of a Pure Spring 18th May 2020

Memories of a Pure Spring is a mesmerizing portrait of modern Vietnam and its people who struggle to survive under the complexities of a post-war regime. During the Vietnam war, Hung, a well-known composer, becomes enchanted by the voice...

Read More 

Marguerite 18th May 2020

In this haunting novel, a young nurse forms an unlikely connection with the elderly man she cares for, and finds herself confronting the guilt she carries from her past Marguerite Demers is twenty-five when she leaves Paris for the...

Read More