Elevator in Sai Gon
Elevator in Sai Gon
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Summary
Personal and political, tragic and bitingly satirical, an ethereal journey through Hanoi, Saigon, Paris, Pyongyang, and Seoul.
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Elevator in Sai Gon by Thun
Personal and political, tragic and bitingly satirical, an ethereal journey through Hanoi, Saigon, Paris, Pyongyang, and Seoul.
"Thuân draws ingeniously on the pacing and tropes of detective fiction to craft a layered tale of family secretsReaders will be rapt. " -- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Elevator in Sài Gòn is a literal and structural exquisite corpse, capturing Vietnam's eventful period from 1954 to 2004. Mimicking an elevator's movement, the novel heightens our yearning for romance and mystery, while unflinchingly exposing such narrative shaft. Channeling Marguerite Duras and Patrick Modiano, the book also offers a dead-on tour of a society cunningly leaping from one ideological mode to the next. As if challenging Rick's parting words to Ilsa in Casablanca, Thuân's sophomore novel in English implies that geopolitical debacles might have been mitigated if personal relations were held in more elevated regard than ‘a hill of beans'.
" -- Thúy Ðinh - NPR
"There is a vertiginous, far-sighted quality to the prose… In Elevator in Sài Gòn, there are no resolutions, only points of departure." -- Jasmine Liu - The Believer
"Thu?n is a clear-eyed chronicler of the French empire and its Vietnamese afterlives: for English-language readers, accustomed as we are to portrayals dominated by the lens of the American-led war, Elevator in Sài Gòn is a thrilling change of orientation." -- Mathilde Monpetit - The Berliner
"Thuân has a sharp eye for detail, describing ‘a Hanoian voice of the kind that could now rarely be heard, and only in Sài Gòn or in Paris, a Hanoian voice that belongs to a Hanoian who has been away from Hà Noi for at least half a century.’ Her themes of identity and estrangement unfold within a series of mysteries, like a set of Matryoshka dolls." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Chinatown is a fever dream, a hallucination, a loop in time and life that Thuân masterfully deploys to capture the disorienting and debilitating effects of migration, racism, and a broken heart in both Vietnam and France. I was completely immersed in this spellbinding novel." -- Viet Thanh Nguyen
"[Chinatown is] a virtuosic stream-of-consciousness mapping of the afterlives of diaspora." -- The New Yorker
"Like Duras, Thuân is an intensely poetic writer. In many writers’ hands, this strategy could be deadening, but Thuân excels at creating momentum through language, and Nguyen An Lý translates that momentum beautifully. Chinatown exerts a near-tidal pull on the reader. I swallowed it down in one gulp." -- Lily Meyer - NPR
"For Elevator in Saigon the truth is less important than the quest itself with its fabric of crossed destinies and intersecting stories. As with Thu?n’s earlier Chinatown, Elevator in Saigon is an incredibly well-orchestrated portrait of a mind trying to making sense of the world." -- Rick Henry - Asian Review of Books
"In Nguy?n An Lý's impeccable translation, Thu?n intricately layers history and memory with her customary brio, creating a portrait of grief and longing that persists across generations. A fractured, atmospheric novel that lingers in the mind long after you turn the last page." -- Jeremy Tiang
"Underneath its calm surface, Elevator in Sài Gòn is a detective thriller, a romance and an interrogation of post-colonial freedom — a beautiful novel about the collision of personal and public histories." -- Tash Aw
""Threaded with observations about the nature of Vietnam’s colonial history and its aftermath, the novel is also an appraisal of memory and elision."" -- The New Yorker
"Elevator in Sài Gòn is a literal and structural exquisite corpse, capturing Vietnam's eventful period from 1954 to 2004. Mimicking an elevator's movement, the novel heightens our yearning for romance and mystery, while unflinchingly exposing such narrative shaft. Channeling Marguerite Duras and Patrick Modiano, the book also offers a dead-on tour of a society cunningly leaping from one ideological mode to the next. As if challenging Rick's parting words to Ilsa in Casablanca, Thuân's sophomore novel in English implies that geopolitical debacles might have been mitigated if personal relations were held in more elevated regard than ‘a hill of beans'.
" -- Thúy Ðinh - NPR
"There is a vertiginous, far-sighted quality to the prose… In Elevator in Sài Gòn, there are no resolutions, only points of departure." -- Jasmine Liu - The Believer
"Thu?n is a clear-eyed chronicler of the French empire and its Vietnamese afterlives: for English-language readers, accustomed as we are to portrayals dominated by the lens of the American-led war, Elevator in Sài Gòn is a thrilling change of orientation." -- Mathilde Monpetit - The Berliner
"Thuân has a sharp eye for detail, describing ‘a Hanoian voice of the kind that could now rarely be heard, and only in Sài Gòn or in Paris, a Hanoian voice that belongs to a Hanoian who has been away from Hà Noi for at least half a century.’ Her themes of identity and estrangement unfold within a series of mysteries, like a set of Matryoshka dolls." -- Kirkus Reviews
"Chinatown is a fever dream, a hallucination, a loop in time and life that Thuân masterfully deploys to capture the disorienting and debilitating effects of migration, racism, and a broken heart in both Vietnam and France. I was completely immersed in this spellbinding novel." -- Viet Thanh Nguyen
"[Chinatown is] a virtuosic stream-of-consciousness mapping of the afterlives of diaspora." -- The New Yorker
"Like Duras, Thuân is an intensely poetic writer. In many writers’ hands, this strategy could be deadening, but Thuân excels at creating momentum through language, and Nguyen An Lý translates that momentum beautifully. Chinatown exerts a near-tidal pull on the reader. I swallowed it down in one gulp." -- Lily Meyer - NPR
"For Elevator in Saigon the truth is less important than the quest itself with its fabric of crossed destinies and intersecting stories. As with Thu?n’s earlier Chinatown, Elevator in Saigon is an incredibly well-orchestrated portrait of a mind trying to making sense of the world." -- Rick Henry - Asian Review of Books
"In Nguy?n An Lý's impeccable translation, Thu?n intricately layers history and memory with her customary brio, creating a portrait of grief and longing that persists across generations. A fractured, atmospheric novel that lingers in the mind long after you turn the last page." -- Jeremy Tiang
"Underneath its calm surface, Elevator in Sài Gòn is a detective thriller, a romance and an interrogation of post-colonial freedom — a beautiful novel about the collision of personal and public histories." -- Tash Aw
""Threaded with observations about the nature of Vietnam’s colonial history and its aftermath, the novel is also an appraisal of memory and elision."" -- The New Yorker
Thuân (Ðoan Ánh Thuân) was born in 1967 in Hanoi. She studied at universities in Russia and France and now lives in Paris. She is a recipient of the Writers’ Union Prize, the highest award in Vietnamese literature. Nguyen An Lý lives in Vietnam and co-edits the online, independent, open-access Zzz Review. Her translations, mostly from English into Vietnamese, include works by authors such as Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, George Orwell, and Amos Oz.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780811238540 |
| ISBN 10 | 0811238547 |
| Title | Elevator in Sai Gon |
| Author | Thuân |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing Corporation |
| Year published | 2024-10-01 |
| Number of pages | 192 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |