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Summary and Reviews of The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

The Mountains Sing by Nguyen Phan Que Mai

The Mountains Sing

by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (28):
  • First Published:
  • Mar 17, 2020, 352 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2021, 368 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Debut Award

The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multi-generational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. "Both vast in scope and intimate in its telling ... Moving and riveting." - Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore not just her beloved country, but her family apart.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.

The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's first novel in English.


From the Author

"My publisher at Algonquin Books forwarded me the news of my first book in English, The Mountains Sing, winning BookBrowse's Best Debut Award for 2020 and I sat there crying.

When I was growing up in Vietnam, as I labored on rice fields and sold things on streets, I escaped into books I had read and stories I made up in my mind, and dreamed of becoming a writer. Thank you so much for enabling my childhood dream to become a reality. Thank you for creating space on your bookshelf and in your heart for stories about Vietnamese people – stories which have been neglected, buried, or erased. BookBrowse's Debut Award shows me that kindness and compassion exists.

My sincere thanks to you, to the many BookBrowse subscribers who voted for a novel that comes from the faraway land of Vietnam, to BookBrowse publisher Davina Morgan-Witts, and to the BookBrowse team. May we read more about each other's experiences so that humans love humans more, so that one day there will be no war on earth."

-- Quế Mai


Pronunciation Guide

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    BookBrowse Awards
    2020

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

This story is beautifully and compellingly told by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, whose family lived through Vietnam's 20th-century history, starting with the land reform, Communist rule and the Vietnam War (Margaret A). It seems odd to note that a book about such painful events is "easy to read," but this poet, essayist and novelist tells her characters' story with clarity and beautiful language (Karen S)...continued

Full Review (531 words)

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(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).

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Beyond the Book



Land Reforms in North Vietnam (1953-1956)

The humiliation of a landlord during North Vietnam's land reform program. The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế is set against the backdrop of several decades in Northern Vietnam, including the period from 1945 to 1976 when it was an independent state known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). This was a time of extraordinary hardship brought about by factors related to shifts in political power and the struggle for Vietnamese self-governance, with a significant one of these factors being the land reform movement. Land reform measures in North Vietnam were initiated in 1953 by Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Lao Dong, the Vietnamese Workers' Party of the DRV, and lasted until 1956. The ideology of the Lao Dong was based on facets of Chinese communism, as well as Soviet Marxism and Leninism. Their ...

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

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