Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains |
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| Author:
| Thanh, Yasuko |
| Read by:
| Phan, Tony |
| ISBN: | 978-1-5436-9094-1 |
| Publication Date: | Feb 2018 |
| Publisher: | Brilliance Publishing, Inc.
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| Imprint: | Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio |
| Book Format: | CD-Audio |
| List Price: | USD $14.99 |
Book Description:
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Winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize - 2017
City of Victoria Butler Book Prize Finalist for the 2017 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award
How can you stand up to tyranny when your own identity is in turmoil?
Vietnam is a haunted country, and Dr. Nguyen Georges-Minh is a haunted man. In 1908, the French rule Saigon, but uneasily; dissent whispers through the corridors of the city. Each day, more Vietnamese rebels are...
More Description
Winner of the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize - 2017
City of Victoria Butler Book Prize Finalist for the 2017 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award
How can you stand up to tyranny when your own identity is in turmoil?
Vietnam is a haunted country, and Dr. Nguyen Georges-Minh is a haunted man. In 1908, the French rule Saigon, but uneasily; dissent whispers through the corridors of the city. Each day, more Vietnamese rebels are paraded through the streets towards the gleaming blade of the guillotine, now a permanent fixture in the main square and a gruesome warning to those who would attempt to challenge colonial rule.
It is a warning that Georges-Minh will not heed. A Vietnamese national and Paris-educated physician, he is obsessed by guilt over his material wealth and nurses a secret loathing for the French connections that have made him rich, even as they have torn his beloved country apart.
With a close-knit group of his friends calling themselves the Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, Georges-Minh plots revenge on the French for the savagery they have shown to the Vietnamese. And it falls to Georges-Minh to create a poison to mix into the Christmas dinner of a garrison of French soldiers. It is an act that will send an unmistakable message to the French: Get out of Vietnam.
But the assassination attempt goes horribly wrong. Forced to flee into the deep jungles of the outer provinces, Georges-Minh must care for his infant son, manage the growing madness of his wife, and elude capture by the hill tribes and the small - but lethal - pockets of French sympathizers.
Journey Prize winner Yasuko Thanh transports us into a vivid, historical Vietnam, one that is filled with chaotic streets, teeming marketplaces, squalid opium dens, and angry ghosts that exist side by side with the living.