André Dao's brilliant debut novel explores his grandfather's ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government
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Monday, May 1, 2023
Complicity, First Indochina War, Vietnam War, Hamish Hamilton, Life, Face, Parent, Laon Cathedral, Writing, University of Cambridge, Survival, Boat, Marriage, English-speaking world, Hope, Guilt, Montagne, Grandparent, Crown Mountain (North Shore Mountains), War, Movement, GB, The Men Behind the Wire, Dislocation, Wire, Student, Social justice, Time, Communism, Love, American, Amnesia, Pivotal, Ethics, Forgiveness, System, Catholic Church, Imagination, Trauma, Family, Memory, Geography, Book, Cassette tape, Film industry, Nightclub, Entertainment, Viet Minh
André Dao’s remarkable debut novel began as an investigation into his paternal grandfather’s ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government, from 1978, three years after the war ended.
Key Points:
- André Dao’s remarkable debut novel began as an investigation into his paternal grandfather’s ten-year detention without trial by the Vietnamese government, from 1978, three years after the war ended.
- From Hanoi to Saigon, Laon to Boissy-Saint-Léger, and Melbourne to Cambridge, this richly layered novel invites the reader to join Dao in disentangling different narrative threads.
Forgetting and remembering
- It’s a homonym of “Annam” (Pacified South), a name imposed on Vietnam by the Chinese imperialists in the seventh century and perpetuated by the French colonialists.
- It refers in fact to “anamnesis”: that is, forgetting and remembering.
- He connects the reader with his story, which resonates beyond the Vietnamese diaspora to touch all diasporic peoples haunted by dispossession and unbelonging.
- Read more:
Model minorities and murder: Tracey Lien investigates the Vietnamese Cabramatta of the 1990s
Generational journeys
- It convincingly demonstrates how, by blending facts and fiction, the narrator comes to an understanding of his grandfather’s decisions.
- Their fight and willingness to sacrifice for their cause shed light on the narrator’s enigmatic grandfather.
- Dao’s creation of a fictional Vietcong ghost in Chí Hòa Prison serves the same purpose.
- With these letters, the narrator’s daughter becomes custodian of her great-grandparents’ memories – and the full story of Anam has been told and transmitted.
- Read more:
War's physical toll can last for generations, as it has for the children of the Vietnam War
A fine example of a global novel
- He raises moral questions of doubt, complicity and guilt, while showing compassion and generosity towards all choices.
- But Dao handles these themes in an original and convincing way, appealing emotionally and intellectually to his reader.
- In terms of thematic, linguistic, and cultural scope, Anam is a fine example of what a global novel should be like.
- And it inspires us to think of a way to create our own houses, from which to tell the stories of our past.