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Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Harvard Book Store's virtual event series and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network welcome celebrated Vietnamese poet NGUYỄN PHAN QUẾ MAI for a discussion of her debut novel, The Mountains Sing. She will be joined in conversation by VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer.
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore not just her beloved country, but her family apart.
Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.
