Overview

A young Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Saigon for her estranged mother’s funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house in Saigon, including what was rumored to be the first elevator in a private home in the country, but days after moving in, their mother mysteriously fell down the elevator shaft, dying in an instant. After the funeral, the daughter becomes increasingly fascinated with her family’s history and learns of an enigmatic figure, Paul Polotsky, from her mother’s notebook. Like an amateur sleuth, she trails Polotsky through the streets of Paris. Meanwhile, she tries to find clues about her mother’s past, which zigzags through Hà N?i, Sài Gòn, Paris, Pyongyang, and Seoul. Combining elements of the detective thriller, a historical romance, and the immigrant experience, Elevator in Sài Gòn is a scathing satire of life in a communist state and a heartbreaking postcolonial ghost story. 

Full Product Details

9780811238540

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Chinatown is a fever dream, a hallucination, a loop in time and life that Thua^n 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, Thuan is an intensely poetic writer. In many writers’ hands, this strategy could be deadening, but Thuan 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 ""Thuân draws ingeniously on the pacing and tropes of detective fiction to craft a layered tale of family secrets. Readers will be rapt. "" -- Publishers Weekly (starred)"

"""Chinatown is a fever dream, a hallucination, a loop in time and life that Thua^n 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, Thuan is an intensely poetic writer. In many writers’ hands, this strategy could be deadening, but Thuan 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"

"Chinatown is a fever dream, a hallucination, a loop in time and life that Thua^n 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, Thuan is an intensely poetic writer. In many writers' hands, this strategy could be deadening, but Thuan 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"""

Author Information

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.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available