The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars - Softcover

Pham, Andrew X.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307381218 ISBN 13: 9780307381217

Publisher: Random House USA Inc, 2009

Synopsis

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World
One of the Los Angeles Times' Favorite Books of the Year
One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian
A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

"Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the -foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective. . . . Now we can add Andrew Pham's Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books."
--New York Times Book Review

"Searing . . . vivid-and harrowing . . . Here is war and life through the eyes of a Vietnamese everyman."
--Seattle Times

Once wealthy landowners, Thong Van Pham's family was shattered by the tumultuous events of the twentieth century: the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and the Vietnam War.
Told in dazzling chapters that alternate between events in the past and those closer to the present, The Eaves of Heaven brilliantly re-creates the trials of everyday life in Vietnam as endured by one man, from the fall of Hanoi and the collapse of French colonialism to the frenzied evacuation of Saigon. Pham offers a rare portal into a lost world as he chronicles Thong Van Pham's heartbreaks, triumphs, and bizarre reversals of fortune, whether as a South Vietnamese soldier pinned down by enemy fire, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese under brutal interrogation, or a refugee desperately trying to escape Vietnam after the last American helicopter has abandoned Saigon. This is the story of a man caught in the maelstrom of twentieth-century politics, a gripping memoir told with the urgency of a wartime dispatch by a writer of surpassing talent.

About this title

Review:

One of the Ten Best Books of the Year, Washington Post Book World
One of the Los Angeles Times' Favorite Books of the Year
One of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, Portland Oregonian
A 2009 Honor Book of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association

"The 'I' of the first-person narration, belonging not the author but to his father; the Edenic lushness of Thong's childhood memories, intermingled with the wrenching dramas to come: These are the devices of sophisticated fiction, drawing us in while keeping us precariously off balance."
--The Boston Globe

"[A] work of radiance. In some ways, it resembles that supreme recollection of a world lost to history's depredations, Speak, Memory, in which Vladimir Nabokov summoned up his pre-revolutionary Russian boyhood. . . . [A]s with Tolstoy's war and peace, darkness, intrinsically formless, gets shape and vividness from the light playing through it. . . . brilliantly chilling . . ."
--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

"Thong Van Pham is constantly fleeing and rebuilding in the midst of war, watching world after world vanish, from the feudal estate of his childhood to the Hanoi of the '50s to the Saigon of the 70s. He and his son have done us the extraordinary service of bringing a few pieces of those worlds back again."
--New York Times Book Review

" . . . [A] gorgeously written book . . . [Pham] seems to have risen to a new level of quiet and powerful storytelling. . . . The Eaves of Heaven is built from a series of short vignettes -- some sweet, some horrifying -- which are not recounted in chronological sequence, but linked in a narrative that darts nimbly across time, lingering on haunting scenes of brutality and violence as well as of beauty and love. . . . It's the absence of chronology that gives Thong's story its magic and depth, and allows it to be sustained by his observations of the ephemeral and the descriptions of unforgettable characters."
--Washington Post Book World

"[A] searing story . . . The remembered images of more tranquil, carefree times are what make the subsequent depictions of wartime terrors and devastation so heartbreaking. . . . Pham has a novelist's eye for telling details . . ."
--Seattle Times

"There are some books that writers shouldn't read . . . because they are so good they make you despair that you could ever write so well yourself. The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham, is such a book. Pham . . . is the best kind of memoirist. . . . He understands a memoir is not really about oneself but about a period, a time, a people. . . . As a memoir, The Eaves of Heaven accomplishes what few polemics do - it is a sweeping personal indictment of war, a reassuring and yet merciless affirmation of the human spirit."
--Portland Oregonian

"Pham deftly paints a compelling portrait of life during three wars in Vietnam . . . This beautifully written books is essential for public and academic libraries."
--Library Journal, starred review

"War-torn as it was, a lost world lives again in Thong's recollections of the passions of his life: food, friends, family, romance. Personal tragedy and triumph, related with amazing perspective against an epic backdrop."
--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"World-shaping events that most Americans know merely through schematic maps and historical summaries take on a poignantly human immediacy in this story of one storm-buffeted man: Thong Van Pham, the author's father. . . . By turns touching and searing, this slice of history--like Pham's earlier Catfish and Mandala (1999)--deserves a wide readership."
--Booklist, starred review

"Alternating between his father's distant past and more recent events, the narrative takes readers on a haunting trip through time and space. This technique lends a soothing, dreamlike quality. . . Pham does an admirable job of recounting the complex cast of characters and the political machinations of the various groups vying for power over the years. In the end, he also gracefully delivers a heartfelt family history."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

About the Author:

ANDREW X. PHAM is the award-winning author of the memoir Catfish and Mandala and the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307381218
• ISBN 13: 9780307381217
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320