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Catfish and Mandala

By Andrew Pham

Product Image: Catfish and Mandala

Catfish and Mandala

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Description
'Jack Kerouac meets "Wild Swans".' The Times. A voyage through Vietnam's ghost-ridden landscape, at once a moving memoir, travelogue and compelling search for identity. Vietnamese-born Andrew Pham finally returns to Saigon, not as a success showering money and gifts onto his family, but as an emotional shipwreck, desperate to find out who he really is. When his sister, a post-operative transsexual, committed suicide, Pham sold all his possessions and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds 'nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness'. At first meant to facilitate forgetfulness, Pham's travels turn into an unforgettable, eye-opening search for cultural identity which flashes back to his parent's courtship in Vietnam, his father's imprisonment by the Vietcong, and his family's nail-bitingly narrow escape as 'boat people'. Lucid, witty and beautifully written, 'Catfish and Mandala' evokes a Vietnam you can almost smell and taste, laying bare the psyche of a troubled hero whose search for home and identity becomes our own.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Number of Pages:
352
Release Date:
2001-02-19
Publication Date:
2001-02-19
Publisher:
HarperCollins
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0006552234
ISBN13:
9780006552239
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
257 g
Height:
131 cm
Width:
198 cm
Thickness:
25 cm
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