Anam

The narrator grew up in a Vietnamese family in Melbourne, worked as a lawyer on human rights cases, and has moved on to academic life at Cambridge. He cannot stop thinking about his grandfather, a gentle man whom the Communist authorities held for a decade in Chi Hoa, one of Vietnam's most feared jails. Caught between an Australian childhood and a Vietnamese heritage, he pores over letters, photos, tapes, official files and family legend, following the family from 1930s Hanoi through war and exile to Saigon, Paris and Melbourne. His grandfather's death outside Paris and his own daughter's arrival make the questions urgent: can one person ever tell another's story, and can remembering leave room for what lies ahead?

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Migration, Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

Australia, Vietnam, France, United Kingdom, 1930s to the present

First published

2023

ISBN

9781761046940 (Hamish Hamilton, Australia)

9781529094695 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9781529094718 (Picador, United Kingdom)

9781935717096 (Kaya Press, United States)

More

Wikidata