The Eaves of Heaven
by Andrew X. Pham

The story of Vietnam, its cycles of war and dismemberment, has been exhaustively chronicled by historians and memoirists, novelists and playwrights, poets and film makers, Americans and Vietnamese. Eaves of Heaven is, however, something completely original. Written in the restrained yet powerful voice of his own father, Andrew Pham weaves a brilliant tapestry of vignettes, which skip back and forth across time in a shuffled chronology, telling the story of his father, his family dynasty, and his country.

Reviewed by Abby Pollack

Beijing Coma
by Ma Jian

For author Ma Jian, the history of modern Beijing really begins with the dark days of the Tiananmen Square massacre, which has its anniversary in June. Exiled writer Jian, whose other well-known works include The Noodlemaker and Red Dust, begins his story with narrator Dai Wei. Dai Wei, a science student at Beijing University, is shot in the head during the fateful crackdown and falls into a coma for ten years. It is from this comatose perspective that the reader is carried through the events leading up to the massacre as well as through the ensuing, dramatic changes made in Beijing in the decade following.

Reviewed by Sally Ito

Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson

Opening in 1963, and taking us year by year through America's engagement with Southeast Asia until 1970, Tree of Smoke sets out to clarify, if such a thing is possible, the morass of the Vietnam War. The novel succeeds brilliantly, and is a work of devastating, tragic, artistic vision. In Denis Johnson's Vietnam, the enemy is everywhere and deep within, allegiances are knotted to a stranglehold, and the entire region is a "fallen world" from which no redemption, besides those offered by myth, is possible.

Reviewed by Madeleine Thien

The Gift of Rain
by Tan Twan Eng

In the Tao Te Ching, Lau Tzu extols the virtue of water and its willingness to dwell in low places that people disdain. Philip, the narrator of Tan Twen Eng's novel, is born with this same virtue. His fluidity is his success, though it is also the cause of deep suffering in the lives of his family and community. As the fortuneteller warned him, "rain also brings the flood." This is Eng's ambitious first novel, addressing duty, control and the complicated nature of fate on the painful backdrop of World War II.

Bringing Tony Home
by Tissa Abeysekara

A friend of mine recommended this book because she knew of my affinity for Proust. Tissa Abeysekara shares that poetic digression into nostalgia, the lingering description of a taste or a sound, and the endearing affection for mother. The attention to sensation is similar, even though we follow Abeysekara's narrator through late twentieth-century Sri Lanka, not turn-of-the-century France, and the flavor that remains is not a saturated madeleine but the metallic taste of water tinged with sardines.

Reviewed by Kristianne Huntsberger