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Chronicles of a Village
An incantatory poetic novel that interweaves the legends, tragedies, and histories of a village in Vietnam.
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.
Nguyen Thanh Hien'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".
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.
Nguyen Thanh Hien'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".
About the author
Nguyen Thanh Hien (b. 1940), one of the most important writers in Vietnam, is the author of numerous novels, poems, and short stories. "Chronicles of a Village" is his first work to be translated into English. He lives in Qui Nhon, Vietnam.