The Zenith
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A major new novel from the most important Vietnamese author writing today
Duong Thu Huong has won acclaim for her exceptional lyricism and psychological acumen, as well as for her unflinching portraits of modern Vietnam and its culture and people. In this monumental new novel she offers an intimate, imagined account of the final months in the life of President Ho Chi Minh at an isolated mountaintop compound where he is imprisoned both physically and emotionally, weaving his story in with those of his wife’s brother-in-law, an elder in a small village town, and a close friend and political ally, to explore how we reconcile the struggles of the human heart with the external world.
These narratives portray the thirst for absolute power, both political and otherwise, and the tragic consequences on family, community, and nationhood that can occur when jealousy is coupled with greed or mixed with a lust for power. The Zenith illuminates and captures the moral conscience of Vietnamese leaders in the 1950s and 1960s as no other book ever has, as well as bringing out the souls of ordinary Vietnamese living through those tumultuous times.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vietnamese exile Huong's fifth novel to be published in America (after No Man's Land) is a dense, complex exploration of love, loss, and destruction of the personal for a feigned "greater good." The story focuses on the nameless aging Vietnamese "President" exiled to a mountaintop Buddhist compound under guard, and the steps his government takes to eradicate his personal life and loves. His one genuinely trusted adviser, Vu, has claimed one of the President's illegitimate sons for his own, hides the President's daughter so she won't be killed, and tries to protect the President's humanity from the escalating violence and dictatorial decisions made by "the government" in the President's name. Memories flood into flashbacks, which flood into more memories, nesting dolls of internal monologue and speculation. The use of present tense throughout both present action and memory is disorienting, as are the temporal loops. As a result, the theme inhumanities performed in the name of good loses resonance. This ambitious novel is frustrating for obscuring characters and ideas under layers of rambling thought, instead of facing the atrocities of mid 20th-century Vietnam head-on.
