Chronicles of a Village (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

ISBN: 0300276400

Author: Hien, Nguyen Thanh

Condition: New

An incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in VietnamThe book bursts with characters, poetry, philosophy, romance, violence, and struggle. . . . A dreamlike, original, strangely hopeful book.-Kirkus ReviewsAt 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.Nguy~n Thanh Hi?^ns Chronicles of a Village, the writers 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.