Awards
1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. Now Grove Press is proud to reissue this contemporary classic by one of America's most important living writers, in a new edition of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain that includes two subsequently published stories "Salem" and "Missing" that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey, returning to the jungles of Vietnam.
Review
"Remarkable...for how beautifully it achieves its daring project of making the Vietnamese real." George Packer, The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Each story unfolds like a delicate paper fan, with startling, ghostly images hiding in every crevice." Rita Ciresi, Library Journal
Review
"Butler's achievement is not only to reveal the inner lives of the Vietnamese, but to show, through their eyes, how the rest of us appear from an outside perspective." Madison Smartt Bell, Chicago Tribune
Review
"The number of novels and short-story collections about the Vietnam War is now approaching 500. Were I to recommend a single volume that poignantly shows the magnitude and the humanity of the tragedy, it would be this one." John Clark Pratt, The Detroit News
About the Author
Robert Olen Butler is the author of ten novels and three collections of stories. In addition to a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 and a National Magazine Award in 2001 (both for fiction), he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and an NEA grant, as well as the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.