Elevator in Saigon
Translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý.
- £12.99
- Available
- Paperback published on 08/08/2024
- Page count: 208 pages
- ISBN: 9781911284963
Quick take
A suspenseful novel that is part detective story, historical romance, postcolonial ghost story and a biting satire of life in a communist state.
Synopsis
A Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Sài Gòn for her estranged mother’s funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house and staged a grotesquely lavish ceremony for their mother to inaugurate what was rumoured to be the first elevator in a private home in the country. But shortly after the ceremony, in the middle of the night, their mother dies after mysteriously falling down the elevator shaft. Following the funeral, the daughter becomes increasingly fascinated with her family’s history, and begins to investigate and track an enigmatic figure, Paul Polotsky, who emerges from her mother’s notebook.
Like an amateur sleuth, she trails Polotsky through the streets of Paris, sneaking behind him as he goes about his usual routines. Meanwhile, she researches her mother’s past – zigzagging across France and Vietnam – trying to find clues to the spiralling, deepening questions her mother left behind unanswered – and perhaps unanswerable.
About the author
Thuận grew up first in Hanoi then Saigon. She spent her college years in Soviet Russia before settling in Paris, where she became a novelist. She is the author of Chinatown, translated by Nguyễn An Lý, and has just finished her tenth novel, B-52.
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