Synopses & Reviews
Behind the Red Mist gives us for the first time in English a wide range of stories from the most important writer of the post-war generation in Vietnam. The characters range from a party official who turns into a goat while watching porno movies, to an Indian who carries his mother's bones in his knapsack, to a war widow trying desperately to piece together her life through the fragments of debris she collects from her back yard. The title novella "Behind the Red Mist" is a Vietnamese "Back To the Future", a social satire in which a young man in the Hanoi of the eighties receives an electric shock and is transported back to his same apartment block in 1967 wartime Vietnam during the American bombing. He not only witnesses the war with the eyes of someone who knows its outcome, but participates in his parents' courtship and discovers some truths about the generation held up to his own as a role model.
Review
"...[An] elegantly construction collection by one of Vietnam's most prominent contemporary writers....handsomely translated by a team of American and Vietnamese writers and scholars." -- The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Reading this important writer, we can understand the consequences of the history we've been through together. His work reconciles former enemies, and mends wounded people and nations." --Maxine Hong Kingston
Review
"These stories range from the serious to the whimsical, from the past to the present, from Vietnam to India to England. Imaginative and lively and often startling, they offer thoughtful readers insight into contemporary Vietnamese literature, culture, and society that are both valuable and pleasurable. Behind the Red Mist is a delightful book from one of the most accomplished writers of Vietnam's post-war generation." --W. D. Ehrhart
About the Author
One of the Vietnam's most prolific writers and winner of several of its most prestigious literary awards, Ho Anh Thai was published in the leading literary magazines while still in high school. The author of eleven books, he is also a diplomat who served in India and the Middle East. Currently he is an editor for World Affairs Weekly.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Fragment of a Man
The Indian
The Goat Meat Special
A Sigh Through the Laburnums
The Chase
The Man Who Stood on One Leg
The Barter
The Man Who Believed in Fairy Tales
Behind the Red Mist
Biographies